Vibration Analysis - Water Pumps

A designer of pumps, produces units for use all over the world. Systems may use diesel engines or electric motors, and can be long vertical turbine "water-lift" pumps or conventional horizontal centrifugal pumps. We provide SPP pumps with lateral or torsional critical speed analysis to mitigate pump vibration along with substantiation for structural steelwork such as base-plates and enclosures. We have experience meeting the needs of many end-users with differing specifications and interpretations. Some consultants will only provide a list of resonances, but this does not always answer the right question, especially considering that long flexible drive systems can be beset with resonances. We have written a bespoke piece of in-house software to perform lateral critical speed and damped imbalance response analyses, taking full account of the complex behaviour of worn hydrodynamic bearings, the stiffening effect of axial thrust and gravity, gyroscopics, and the mechanical coupling between rotor and stator. From this we can ask the right questions in terms of bearing wear, material stress / fatigue, deformation and maintaining clearances, and vibration transmission to the foundations. What starts as a formidable list of critical speeds (in stark contravention of the project specification) becomes a detailed and realistic assessment of the actual impact of vibration. In most cases this can be convincingly argued to be benign, or else it informs straightforward design changes.

For more information on Vibration Analysis - Water Pumps talk to DC White Engineering Consultants