Performance and ferrography analysis for determining the wear of an external gear pump

Abstract

The present work employs an experimental and analytical method to investigate the wear of an external gear pump. The first part of experimental method involves, running the gear pump on test rig for set number of working hours and the performance curves are plotted for studying any variation during the course of experiments. In the second part of experimental method the circulated oil was studied for any contamination. Contaminated oil is an indication of wear which is to be detected using ferrography. The gear pump therefore was run for maximum number of hours to study the variation in performance of gear pump due to wear during the running operation. The oil samples were collected after the pump has been run at a set discharge pressure for a certain number of hours. Wear was expected to occur to detect the presence of ferrous particles for checking whether the gear pump components have worn out after the operation. Direct ferrogram reading machine was used to detect small and large particle size concentration and based on this the wear severity index was found out analytically. Also the necessary conclusions using graphical trend are obtained between particle size concentrations and wear severity index with respect to time.