Digital Inspections For Pump Test Rigs

Pumps are critical equipment in many industries and applications with high downstream impact during malfunctions or failures. To ensure high uptime and compliance, every pump is tested for recommendation operating conditions for it's specifications at the manufacturing facility before dispatch to customers.

The pumps are tested, certified, and shipped to customer sites for setting up operations or replace existing pumps. It's only after the pump is installed that customers realise if the pump's specifications do not match. There's no visibility into the pump's behavior after manufacturing until customer site - this is usually a few months. In such events, either the customer rig changes, pump is corrected, or replaced entirely. While there is a paper trail of pump certification, it has reached a saturation point and customers prefer conducting audits at the time of pump certification.

Create digital twins with remote audits for pump inspections and utilise a combination of CAD + IoT data + inference + reporting to for an end-to-end audit trail. The same digital twin is used to track the health of each instance of a pump after it is installed at customer site.

The project is implemented in a phased manner with different phases achieving various aspects of customer success.

Phase 1 - a functional remote inspection

Achieve a functioning remote inspection solution by overlaying key audit related information necessary to certify the pump. This includes:

• Technical specifications of the pump (static)
• Variable data (flow rates, suction/discharge pressures, electrical parameters, noise, and vibration)
• The test rig and it's specifications
• Digital twin or video (or both) audits to validate certification before the certification

At the time of audit, the inspectors setup the rig and proceed to execute necessary test conditions. On the software solution, they punch in variable data to record and validate expected pump behaviour, cross-reference it with the real-world behaviour and either certify, record deviations/tolerances up to the acceptable level, or fail the pump.

Phase 2 - cover all models and variants

Phase 2 expands to cover the following:

• Recreate digital twin for all model/variant combinations with the corresponding test rig.
• Integrate data feed from the test dig directly into the digital twin instead of manually punching in variable data.
• Automate the testing and audit exercise with a pre-recorded audit trail notifying customers of anomalies and deviations from their benchmarks proactively.

This exercise covers digital twins for pump and test rigs for all models, opening doors to possible future designs of new pump test rigs.

Phase 3 - the true power of digital twin

With the audit trail established for every model and variant, we expand the scope of digital twins to cover all instances of every model/variant from the point of audit on test rig until end of life at the customer site. This captures live behaviour of every pump throughout it's lifecycle, with proactive alerts/notifications enabling just-in-time issue resolution and minimal downtime. A few additional layers will be built to achieve this phase:

• IoT sensors installed on pumps that can stream live data.
• Rules engines to determine raise alerts based on historical sensor data.
• A learning engine that improves over time, achieves higher level of accuracy.
• Corrective procedures as a part of the software solution.

Today's technologies enable round-the-clock monitoring for operations and preventive maintenance of pumps in critical sectors. Digital twins will help prevent unscheduled downtimes, and simulate unexpected conditions that lead to disruptions.