Motor maintenance

Plewako, S. 1979. Influence of traction motors maintenance on durability and reUabdity of railway vehicles (in Polish). Ill Konfereneja Naukowa Pojazdy Szynowe. Poznan. 

If maintenance is performed, there are two principal maintenance strategies preventive and breakdown maintenance. These are not mutually exclusive, and may be combined even in the same piece of equipment. Take for example a private motor car. The owner performs a mixture of preventive maintenance (by adding lubricating oil, topping up the battery fluid, hydraulic fluid and coolant) with breakdown maintenance (e.g. only replacing the starter motor when it fails, rather than at regular intervals). 

Breakdown maintenance is suitable for equipment whose failure does not threaten production, safety or the environment, and where the cost of preventing failure would be greater than the consequence of failure. In this case, the equipment would be repaired either on location or in a workshop. Even with this policy, it is assumed that the recommended lubrication and minor servicing is performed, just as with a motor car. 

Figure 12 shows the plan and elevation views of a process unit piping (9). A dmm is supported off the piperack. Heat exchangers are located far enough back from the support columns so that they are accessible and their shell covers can be removed. Pumps are located underneath the piperack, but sufficient room is provided for maintenance equipment to access the motors and to remove the pump if necessary. The motor is always oriented away from the process equipment and located on that side of the piperack. Instmment valve drops are shown supported from the columns. The instmment trays themselves mn on the outside of the support columns. Flat turns are only made from the outside position of the piperack. Nozzle-to-nozzle pipe mns are made whenever possible. Larger lines are located on the outside of the piperack. Connections to nozzles above the rack are made from the top... 

The primaiy advantages of a centrifugal pump are simplicity, low first cost, uniform (nonpulsating) flow, smaU floor space, low maintenance expense, quiet operation, and adaptability for use with a motor or a turbine drive. 

The most common maintenance problem with centrifugal pumps is with the seals. Mechanical seal problems account for most of the pump repairs in a chemical plant, with bearing failures a distant second. The absence of an external motor (on canned pumps) and a seal is appeahng to those experienced with mechanical seal pumps. 

Within these basic principles there are many types of electric motors. Each has its own individual operating characteristics peculiarly suited to specific drive applications. Equations (29-1) through (29-9), presented in Table 29-1, describe the general operating characteristics of alternating-current motors. When several types are suitable, selection is based on initial installed cost and operating costs (including maintenance and consideration of rehability). 

Maintenance and Reliability Preventive maintenance requires that all engines be shut down at periodic intervals for inspection and repair. For properly maintained heavy-duty engines availability is over 97 percent, with maintenance costs of 2.50 to 5 per horse-power-year and lubricating-oil consumption of 1 to 2 gal/hp-year. While this represents a high degree of reliability, outages of heavy-duty engines are more frequent than those of electric motors or steam turbines. 

Although power-transmission equipment is generally simpler than the machines it connects, it nevertheless fails in seivdce as often as—if not more often than—motors, turbines, pumps, and the like. Care must be given to the proper selection and maintenance of power-transmission equipment otherwise, the best process machines cannot perform as expected. 

Since there is only one winding and the poles are already shaded at one particular end, the direction of the rotating flux is fixed and so is the direction of rotation of the rotor. The direction of rotation cannot be altered as in the earlier cases. Since there is only one winding and no need of a speed-operated centrifugal switch, these motors require almost no operational maintenance. 

Smeaton, R.W.. Motor Application and Maintenance Hand Book, McGraw Hill, New York (1969). 

Soft starting minimizes the starting mechanical and thermal stresses/shocks on the machine and the motor. It results in reduced maintenance cost, fewer breakdowns and hence longer operating life for both. Reduced starting current is an added advantage. 

A more economical alternative is found in a submersible pump where the pump, directly coupled with the prime mover, is slid into the tubewell through narrow pipes. Narrow pipes are easy to sink into rocky terrain or very deep water levels. They are less expensive and are easy to install due to the elimination of the need for a pump house. Once the unit is slid into the well it requires little maintenance. (See Figures 7.5-7.7.) Such pumps have a standard centrifugal multistage arrangement, and the motors are required to work under water or any other liquid. These motors have an exclusive application for submersible pumps. 

The maintenance of such motors at site is easy, since the stator can be wound with readymade PVC insulated winding coils, and does not need a varnish impregnation and subsequent baking etc., unlike a standard motor. It is thus easy to rewind them at site. 

The use of a squirrel cage motor is, however, inevitable as discussed earlier particularly for a process plant or a power house application, where downtime for maintenance of a slip-ring motor is unwelcome, or a chemical plant or contaminated locations, where the application of a slipring motor is prohibitive. To meet such load requirements with a squirrel cage motor, the use of fluid couplings to start the motor lightly and reduce starting time, is quite common and economical, as discussed in Chapter 8, and must be adopted in the above case. 

One can adopt a suitable procedure of installation, grouting, type of foundation and alignment etc., depending upon the size of motor, the duty it has to perform and the location of the installation (such as hazardous or seismic, etc.). Here we discuss briefly only the important aspects of installation and maintenance of electric motors. 

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