Condition Monitoring, Troubleshooting and Reliability in Rotating Machinery

21Developing Rotating Machinery Competency

By Robert X. Perez

Part I: Preparing Students to Work with Rotating Machinery

Rotating Machinery Related Job Functions

Rotating Machinery is a broad category of machinery (see Figure 21.1) found in the industry that includes:

• Fluid movers such as centrifugal and reciprocating pumps and centrifugal and reciprocating compressors
• Speed modifiers such as gear boxes, fluid couplings, and belts drives
• Drivers such as electric motors, steam turbines, and gas turbines

Why should you consider a career in rotating machinery? Most machinery professionals find working around rotating machinery to be very interesting and rewarding. As a machinery professional, you get to work on and sometimes solve very challenging technical problems. Here are a few examples of challenging problems that I (Perez) have faced:

1. A centrifugal pump is failing seven (7) times a year. I had to study the process conditions and pump’s design to find the root cause of these failures.
2. Gas turbine blades are failing catastrophically. I had to examine the design of the blades and the operating conditions to determine the root cause of these failures.
3. New, multistage centrifugal pumps, operating in parallel were failing repeatedly. I had to carefully examine how the pumps were operated to understand why these pumps where failing.

   

   Figure 21.1 Rotating machines, similar to ...