Causes of gear pump fails and methods for their elimination

Abstract

Gear pumps are an important element of many production systems and their replacement in case of failure can be quite expensive, so it is important to have a modern and well-tuned technology for their recovery. There are many methods for restoring the pump's performance, depending on the reason that led to its failure. (Research purpose) The research purpose is in determining what causes most often lead to loss of pump performance, and developing a recovery method that provides the greatest post-repair service life of the pump and low cost of repair. (Materials and methods) Authors took into account that the applied coatings must have sufficient adhesion strength and resistance to mechanical, thermal and corrosion loads during operation. It was found that most often significant leaks of the working fluid, leading to failure, occur due to an increase in the gap between the inner surface of the housing and the gears due to active wear of the housing wells. Authors determined that the method of electric spark treatment of worn-out housing wells is best suited to perform the task (a large post-repair resource and low costs). (Results and discussion) It was found by laboratory studies of the adhesion strength of electric spark coatings with various electrodes that the best transfer of the material to the substrate is provided by bronze electrodes BrMKts3-1. It was noted that the coatings applied using the BrMKts3-1 electrode have high strength properties. (Conclusions) Research conducted in the center for collective use "Nano-Center" VIM confirmed the possibility of effective recovery of the gear pump by electric spark treatment.