Engineers’ Guide to Rotating Equipment

Citation

Petropoulos, G.P. (2003), "Engineers’ Guide to Rotating Equipment", Industrial Lubrication and Tribology, Vol. 55 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/ilt.2003.01855aae.001

Engineers’ Guide to Rotating Equipment

Engineers’ Guide to Rotating Equipment

Clifford Matthews

Keywords: Wear, Analysis

Presented here is a concise and comprehensive work on the general principles and characteristics of modern rotating machinery. It is intended to be an introductory guide in this subject incorporating both technical and administrative/legislative aspects.

As is well known, every engineer or technician in industry has to address on-the-job problems related to rotating equipment. The latter constitutes an interdisciplinary field and has attracted considerable attention from industry and academia. Testing, identification and monitoring methodologies are still suitably under development, and the number of respective journals and books is still increasing, enriching the literature with more precise and reliable models for the sometimes highly complicated rotating systems.

An appropriate handbook should provide inexperienced technical staff with all the useful information they need to fix tolerances, calculate functional parameters of machine elements, locate and anticipate harmful vibration or noise, balance rigid and flexible rotors etc. and with technical standards and directives for design, instrumentation and machine monitoring with which to harmonize.

On the other hand, such a handbook has to combine classical aspects and methods with contemporary evolutions and there are many of the latter, in order to increase the effectiveness of its use and to promote understanding between engineers at a higher level.

The author of this handbook is Clifford Matthews, a recognized engineer who specializes in pressure systems on which he is also an author of several books and training courses and variedly experienced in carrying out factory inspections worldwide. He has attempted here to cover the general principles of rotating equipment under the constraint of a pocket reference publication.

The book is divided into 14 chapters: the basic mathematics, physical and engineering magnitudes and units are presented successfully in Chapter 1; the drawback is that it occupies almost 15 per cent of the total work and could be shortened. Also, Fourier transforms and elements from random process analysis could be introduced at the expense of some mathematical fundamentals, which are easily found elsewhere. Chapter 2 deals with the modes of mechanical stress like bending and torsion, the rotating machine elements and the principles of dynamic motion are explicitly described in Chapter 3. Fundamentals of vibration, balancing and noise are introduced in Chapter 4; useful standards are given in tables but spectrum analysis is omitted, as well as the principles of resonance and critical rotor speed. This does not help the novice engineer or student, who needs to be familiar with a vibration analyzer screen for purposes of diagnosis and predictive maintenance. Furthermore, one could identify many more types of rotating machines vibration than the bearing housing and the shaft vibration that the author cite as the dominant cases. Since any topic associated with rotor dynamics and vibration is nowadays evaluated for multiple use, this chapter is weak in this regard despite the examples of vibration monitoring given in the “practical” Chapters 7-10. An outline of the various machine elements that construct rotating machinery is appropriately presented in Chapter 5. Principles of fluid mechanics are very well described in Chapter 6. In the following Chapters 7-10, individual types and specific items of rotating equipment such as pumps, compressors, turbines, propellers are described in detail with suitable practical examples and nice figures. In Chapter 11, mechanical design basics are provided and Chapter 12 covers the construction materials of rotating equipment. Detailed summaries of machinery directives are listed in Chapter 13. All three chapters are very well developed.

It looks as if the author has finally succeeded in giving the desired “first port of call” information on theoretical and practical issues relating to rotating equipment. He really excels in presenting technical codes, standards and administrative aspects due to his experience in inspection problems. However there are some significant omissions such as lubrication and associated tribology and maintenance techniques. Regarding the former, apart from a general citation in Chapter 11, only a table of friction coefficient values for pairs of sliding materials is provided. Lubrication and wear problems are usually met through using this type of equipment, considerably affecting the operational properties; the selection of the proper lubricant should be referred to in Chapter 12. Some elements of maintenance must also be clearly mentioned. Certainly, the limitations of space did not allow an extensive approach but some of the aforementioned omissions could be rectified in the future edition and the book would then be as complete as possible.

As a general comment, this is a balanced engineer’s handbook of deep knowledge and essential importance to everybody concerned with rotational equipment. Apart from some comments for particular improvements it deserves to be one of the first choices from the library shelf.

Georgios P. PetropoulosUniversity of Thessaly, Greece