IR Thermography in Hydraulic System Troubleshooting

Sophisticated hydraulic system troubleshooting is a very complicated process and requires a lot of expertise and experience using very sophisticated technology. Most of the problems found in hydraulic systems are related to blockages or internal leakage of hydraulic fluid in the system. The heat distribution in the suspected faulty areas of the system changes, usually due to one of these issues, and thermography is used to locate the problem source and take appropriate remedial measures. We have developed a scheduled thermography survey program for our critical servo-hydraulic systems for monitoring consistency of thermal patterns at different areas and look for any impending problems. Thermography has also been beneficial in diagnosing many problems like internal leakages in hydraulic valves, and locating faulty accumulators in complicated high-pressure hydraulic circuits. This paper will discuss the details of our thermography scanning process and scheduling, and will also show thermal and photographic image examples of detected problems, diagnostics information, and where thermographer and hydraulic engineer work as a team to solve the problem.