Discipline
Rotating Equipment
Pumps, compressors and their drivers, mechanical seals and flush plans, bearings and lubrication, vibration analysis and shaft alignment.
- Topics
- 4
- Standards covered
- 13
Intermediate
Builds on the basics
Pumps — head, NPSH and why cavitation is a suction problem
Centrifugal versus positive displacement, what a pump curve tells you, why NPSH decides whether a pump survives, and why most pump failures are really piping failures.
Compressors — surge, staging and the machine you cannot replace quickly
Why gas is harder than liquid, what surge actually does to a centrifugal compressor, why compression is staged with intercooling, and why liquid in a suction line is catastrophic.
Bearings, seals and lubrication — the parts that actually fail
How a hydrodynamic journal bearing carries load on a film of oil, why babbitt is deliberately soft, what a mechanical seal is really sealing, why the seal chamber environment decides seal life, and what an API 682 flush plan is doing.
Vibration and alignment — reading a spectrum and getting the shaft straight
Why 1X usually means unbalance and 2X usually means misalignment, what a proximity probe sees that a casing accelerometer cannot, why hot alignment differs from cold, what resonance does to an otherwise healthy machine, and why a coast-down tells you something a steady run never will.