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

Development of advanced rotor-bearing systems for feedwater pumps. Phase 2

Technical Report ·
OSTI ID:6266586

This report summarizes the second phase of an ongoing four-phase effort to develop design improvements which reduce feed pump vibration problems. Excessive vibration is a common cause of feed pump forced outages, accounting for a significant amount of forced power reduction throughout the electric utility industry. In addition, a byproduct of excessive feed pump vibration is high maintenance costs due to the shortened lives of various pump components such as seals, wear rings, shafts, bearings and thrust balancers. Earlier studies of the Phase-1 project showed that present feed pump rotor-bearing systems frequently suffer from a lack of sufficient damping with which to control the vibration induced by various hydraulic excitation forces within the pump. The overall approach on the problem is to devise high-damped rotor-bearing configurations. Described in this report are two important components of this approach; the development of squeeze-film dampers for feed pump applications and the search for interstage sealing configurations which will provide additional vibration damping at mid-span locations between the journal bearings.

Research Organization:
Akron Univ., OH (USA); Energy Research and Consultants Corp., Morrisville, PA (USA)
OSTI ID:
6266586
Report Number(s):
EPRI-CS-2027; ON: DE82900376
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English