Babbit- , white metal-, hydrodynamic bearings

New production & Repair by Energetic for turbomachinery applications. Energetic has it own production facility for babbitt hydrodynamic bearing production and repair. 

New manufacturing of fix geometry type bearings , existing ones are rejected because of outside geometry non conformity due to use

Energetic has it own production facility for babbitt hydrodynamic bearing production and repair. 

• Babbitt centrifugal lining
• Machine shop
• Geometrical and bounding inspection facility
• Engineering bearing load calculations & rotor dynamic simulations
• Reverse engineering capabilities
• 2D design & production drawings

Radial axial fix geometry bearing machining after babbitt lining

Project run through time

• Standard run through time of 4 weeks or specific demands
• 24/7 emergency service

Energetic is supporting a lot in emergency cases while the bearing is traveling to our workshop the engineering department is preparing the repair/remanufacturing. Data is collected in case after the repair a new spare bearing is requested. 

Emergency repair of a cast iron bearing shell from an Alstom Steam turbine with dovetail bounding support

Quality management

• ISO 9001
• Geometrical check by use of scanning and quality check software software
• Ultrasonic bounding test ISO 4386-1
• Penetrant bounding test ISO 4386-3

Geometry check during data collecting and after producing a reverse engineered bearing by use of blue light data collecting and geometrical transfer of the point cloud to useful data to compare by use of a quality control software.

Application field and geometrical range

All types of bearings applied for turbomachinery applications up to a diameter of 500 mm.

Journal bearings / Trust bearings Compressors fix geometry as tilting pad pivot design for:

• Turbines ( steam-gas)
• Gearboxes
• Generators
• Motors
• Pumps
• Turboexpanders

Reverse engineering and manufacturing of trust pad’s for various steam turbine applications. (above/below)

Inspection of used and or rejected bearings

Customers are sending used and or rejected bearings after maintenance outages for inspection and reporting. After the inspection a report is send with the facts & findings and repair or renewal proposals.
Inspection reports content the executed activity is always reported for historical data collecting purposes. UT and NDT reports together with the geometrical inspection report are communicated.

Reproduction after reverse engineering of a axial radial with tilting pads equipped bearing for turbo compressor application. Imperial design is stayed while all the fixations are transferred into metrical design.

Production of tilting pads by use of reverse engineering and designing 2D production drawings.

Production of all kind of tilting pads by use of centrifugal babbitt lining all instrumentation positions are up front machined. It is also possible to pre-mount the temperature probes.

Repairing of axial active trust bearing of a MAN MARK 2 with heat transfer backing material to temporary solve an alignment problem caused by asymmetrical dilatation due to pipe stress.

Preliminary machining process before UT check, For final machining an off set is created for Lemmon type application.

Machining of final diameter before the oil pockets are created.

Production after reverse engineering including auxiliary equipment like oil nozzles , check valves, lift oil equipment.

Trouble shooting and engineering analyses. Case 1

In case of unknown bearing failures , energetic is offering trouble shooting , vibration spectrum analyse and engineering analysis including bearing load calculations and rotor dynamic simulations.

ABB extraction steam turbine 25 Mw modification of bearing design to solve vibration problems during extraction winter modus for city heating purposes.
We redesigned the bearing to a squeeze type. With a temperature rise of 5°C during max. load but a significant vibration drop which allowed the turbine to operate within the vibration specifications.
The alternative was to re-blade the complete rotor due to slight bending.
.

 Trouble shooting and engineering analyses. Case 2

A Sulzer RC 4a-4N-80A vacuum compressor from a papermill application was suffering from multiple shut downs due to vibration excesses caused by oil whirl which was identified in the spectrum analyses research. 

Mechanical run out , electrical run out and geometry as the possible unbalance was checked ( ISO 1940-1 G1)

An unusual shape was identified and also bounding problems where identified during an Non Destructive Test

A geometry check was executed and the bearings where scanned by use of blue light to load a 3D in a rotor dynamic simulation program to identify the behaviour of such a shape during loaded operation.  

Calculation shows that logarithmic decrement (damping) of first mode falls below zero around 5 000 RPM, indicating possible rotor instability above this speed.

Basic vibro data from field operation containing events with instability trips were provided. Instability in the subsynchronous frequency around 3 375 CPM (42% of running speed) has been observed. This is in line with typical oil whirl instability symptoms.

This instability can be also Whip related to 1st mode frequency, which is calculated around 2 900 CPM at operating speed. To confirm which instability type it is, startup/rundown waterfall and/or bode diagrams from field service would be needed. However, exact phenomena identification is not critical in this case, both instability types can be treated by increasing the modal damping of concerned shape.

To improve the damping, we recommend replacing the cylindrical bearings with lemon bearings. After producing those lemon type bearings and installing the problems where solved.

 *Energetic nv has no agreements or any relationship with the original equipment manufacturer