A refinery contacted us because it was experiencing recurrent failures of a cylindrical roller bearing in a critical centrifugal pump, resulting in costly downtime.
We investigated the application and found that a change from belt-drive to direct-drive for the pump was the cause: the new configuration had drastically reduced the radial load on the bearing, thus leading to rollers slipping on the inner raceway. We solved the problem by replacing the existing unit with an NSK deep groove ball bearing unit.