| Popis: |
Striving to achieve high level of plant's reliability, and realizing the wide impact of piping misalignment on rotating equipment premature failures, Oil & Gas industry has come up with many standards and best practices aiming to eliminate or minimize to the possible extent the effects of pipe strain on rotating equipment. Pipe strain is considered as one of the most frequent reasons causing rotating equipment to fail. It occurs when there is a misalignment between the piping and the equipment's suction and/or discharge flanges. A case study of a vertical crude charge pump at Saudi Aramco plant, experiencing high vibration and repetitive mechanical seal failures due to piping misalignment and subsequent pipe strain effects will be considered in this paper, highlighting the corrective actions adopted following the relevant investigation and troubleshooting conducted by Operation, Maintenance and Engineering (OME) team. Moreover, a Finite Element Analysis (FEA) model will be presented, demonstrating the significant impact of pipe strain on the pump's shaft behaviour and the potential modes of failure in case pump-to-pipe flanges misalignments are not seriously considered. |
