Authors: Eng. Potito Cordisco, Senior Project Manager, Vicoter
Eng. Mauro Terraneo, Chief Technical Officer, Vicoter
In some installations, even the smallest vibrations generated by machines must be monitored in order not to run into serious problems lately. For sure, an electrical transformer is not part of that category of devices generally associated with the idea of vibration source, but when it must supply the largest telescope of the world, even the minimum oscillation can be important.
The European Southern Observatory (ESO – https://www.eso.org/public/) is an international astronomical organization constituted by sixteen nations all over the world (https://www.eso.org/public/italy/about-eso/memberstates/). Created in 1962, ESO provides astronomers with cutting-edge instruments and access to the southern sky.
Presently, ESO is manufacturing the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremely_Large_Telescope) on the top of Cerro Armazones in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. When completed, it will be the world’s largest optical/near-infrared ELT.
Italy joined ESO as a Member State on 24 May 1982. As a long-standing member, the country’s community of scientists and engineers have contributed to ESO projects in many keyways, and particularly, Italy is also largely involved in the ELT construction with many private companies. Among these, MF Trasformatori S.r.l. (http://www.mftrasformatori.it/) is in charge to supply the telescope with three very large electric transformers. Being the telescope very sensitive to vibrations, the technical specifications require an ad-hoc investigation on the ground transmitted vibration levels of all the installed devices. For this reason, MF Trasformatori required Vicoter (www.vicoter.it) to investigate the behavior of its products before they can be put in service in Chile.
Vicoter is an Italian company operating in the market of vibrational measurements since 2009 with the most up-to-date software and hardware instruments to measure vibrations on large and small structures belonging to many fields, from aerospace to automotive, from building to industrial machinery.
In this activity, Vicoter used PCB accelerometers and a Siemens-LMS SCADAS front end, which guaranteed excellent insulation from the electromagnetic fields generated by the transformers themselves, to investigate the operative transmitted vibrations of three transformers of different sizes.
The job was accomplished at the client’s site, in the laboratory of MF Trasformatori in Calcinato, Brescia, Italy. The structures were investigated in many test cases and results were processed and compared with the requests from ESO in terms of g-RMS in octave band, assessing their capability to satisfy the required standards.
Vicoter wish to thank MF Trasformatori staff and, specifically, Manlio Landi, for the kindness shown during the test campaign
