Root Cause Analysis Of Five Costly Centrifugal Pump Failures

Abstract

Machinery failure analysis and troubleshooting are often pursued in a somewhat haphazard, unstructured fashion. This paper presents a novel, proven, and well focused approach which can quickly lead to the root cause identification of virtually any component t distress. This repeatable method is based on the premise that components fail only if they are subjected to undue force, a reactive environment, time-based exposure, or extreme temperature. However, while these failure mechanisms will tell how and why a failure mode such as brittle fracture, melting, etc., might have occurred in chemical or metallurgical terms, failure mechanisms do not define the root cause of failure.