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U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Development of advanced rotor/bearing systems for feed water pumps. Final report

Technical Report ·
DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/5596944· OSTI ID:5596944

Feed pump outages are a significant contributor to power plant forced outages and have been targeted by EPRI as one area where the application of advanced machinery technology can provide design improvements leading to increased power plant availability. Many common feed pump failures are associated with or directly caused by excessive pump vibration. A four-phase EPRI project has been undertaken to develop pump design improvements and new configurations which potentially reduce pump vibration and related failures. Phase 1 of this project has been completed and is summarized. The development of design improvements requires the use of advanced engineering analyses to evaluate potential reductions in vibration levels. Types of vibration which must be analyzed in feed water pumps include synchronous and non-synchronous forced vibrations, and rotor/bearing instability vibrations. Vibration analysis methods suitable for evaluation of feed water pumps were developed by upgrading and enhancing general purpose advanced machinery vibration computer codes. These analysis methods were used to study twelve-stage boiler feed pumps and the results correlated with field measurements made on these pumps. The correlation shows why these pumps have had a history of severe vibration problems. It also shows the level of engineering analysis required to study new pump configurations which have the greatest potential for reducing vibration levels.

Research Organization:
Akron Univ., OH (USA); Energy Research and Consultants Corp., Morrisville, PA (USA)
OSTI ID:
5596944
Report Number(s):
EPRI-FP-1274
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English