Abstract

Many industries, like the aviation industry and border control, rely on X-ray inspection systems for their security operations. These systems are state of the art complex electromechanical machines that need to be maintained by highly qualified service specialists. The most critical part of each x-ray inspection system is the x-ray generator. In this article, we propose a technique for remote diagnostics based on electrical and thermal telemetry monitoring. We have studied the most important electrical and thermal parameters of various conventional X-ray generators equipped with stationary anode X-ray tubes, up to 300kV acceleration voltage, and their correlation to the operational condition of the generator. The experimental results, obtained in a real operational environment, show that a limited number of monitoring parameters are enough to properly estimate the condition and diagnose some failures in X-ray generators. A simplified physical model, based on electrical and thermal parameters, has been proposed and compared with the results.