Introduction

It is part of an engineer s education to experience an occasional failure. The incidents which are briefly described in the following paragraphs have been included in this book in the hope that readers will benefit from them. They demonstrate the need for lateral thinking at the planning or design stage and the truth of the dictum that if it can happen it probably will.

Lack of Ventilation

This failure occurred at a prestigious multiset installation having a rated output of several megawatts several years after it had been commissioned. Test runs had been conducted at regular intervals and the operating personnel were confident that it would perform satisfactorily when it was required to do so.

A prolonged supply failure was, however, to prove their confidence misplaced; the sets started and supplied the load but after about 20 min there was a complete shutdown due to overtemperature. The reason was surprisingly simple, the duct carrying the engine-room ventilation air had been blanked off and there was no air flow. It is believed that contractors working in the winter had blanked off the duct for the benefit of their workers and had departed without removing it.

This failure demonstrates the need for test runs to be on load and of sufficient duration for thermal stability to be reached; until this failure, test runs had been of short duration.

A Bypassed Radiator

This failure occurred at a conventional single-set installation having a rated output of about 1 MW. The installation was one...