ROLLS BEARINGS FAILURE

VERTICAL RAW MILL

KOLLENBACH PLANT

Andreas Holtman
Carlos Da Silva
Oct, 9th, 05
 General Comments
This report will content the RCA (Root cause analysis) for the
Failure on the Rolls bearings of the Vertical Raw Mill at the Kollenbach plant
(Germany).

This is being created for two main reasons, the first one is the
analysis of such important failure, and the second one as training for Plant
personnel.

It has been created following CEMEX Standards for RCA through a

failure tree analysis, in the boxes in blue will be possible failures modes and
each box has a connection that contains the support information. And at the
end there is a slide with the Root cause (s) of the problem and
recommendations to avoid this failure.

This RCA will be analyzed from two points of view, one will be
finding the root cause of the mechanical problem and the next one will be to
find why this failure was not predicted.
 Vertical Raw Mill
None Predicted
Vertical Raw Mill
Bearing Failure (Rolls)
See comments

Operational failure Mechanical Failure Lubrication Problem None Predicted

External Object into Raw Mill Deffective Assembly Seals Failure Vibration Monitoring
See comments See comments See comments See comments

Equipment Overload Installation Problem Temperature Monitoring

See comments See comments Seals Design See comments
See comments
Deffective Bearings Tribology
See comments Seals Installation See comments
See comments
Vibration Problem
See comments Oil Characteristics
See comments

Cleanning Fan problems

See comments

Root Causes & Recommendations

 Rolls Bearings Raw Mill Failure
On Thursday September 22nd at 6:39 am. The Raw Mill was
stopped for a schedule PM day, normally plant schedule this PM every 4
weeks.

One of the regular inspections is to check a magnetic bolt that is

located inside each roll to capture metal particles, in this inspection big
pieces of Metal were found trapped in two of the bolts (Rolls 1 & 3), after
this, the decision was made to leave the Mill down to replace all three rolls
because it was pretty evident that the bearings had failed.

The repairs were made in 80 hours, all liners were changed from
the rolls in operation to the spare set of rolls and then installed. Kiln was
stopped for lack of Raw material on Saturday September 24th at 4:20 am.
The total downtime for the kiln was 24.5 hours.

These rolls that failed were installed on the last Major Repair in
February 2005, they were brand new rolls fabricated and assembled by
Gebr. Pfeiffer.
 Rolls Bearings Raw Mill Failure
After the Mill was brought back in operation the 2 damaged rolls
were sent to Gebr. Pfeiffer for inspection after all pictures, oil samples, etc.
were taken, the order was given to them not to open the rolls until CEMEX
personnel arrived to the shop.

On Thursday October 6th, Andreas Holtmann and Carlos Da Silva

went to the shop to witness the rolls inspection. All 2 rolls were completed
disassembly in the presence of CEMEX personnel.

Now, the team has enough information to start with the RCA.
 External object into Raw Mill
All three rolls were inspected at the time of the failure and not
apparent damage was seen on any of the surface of the rolls. Table and Mill
internals were inspected as well and not evidence of external object damage
was found, as seen on the picture, click to enlarge.
Roll Picture
 Equipment Overload
Not apparent overload had occurred in the Mill in the last 6 months,
it can be seen in the Amps of the table and the pressure of the hydraulic
system in the following trends from the control room:
 Mechanical Failure
It is pretty obvious that a catastrophic failure happened on the
bearings, as showed on the following pictures, Click on Picture to enlarge:

Yoke Side Bearing, Roll 1 Yoke Side Bearing, Roll 1 Yoke Side Bearing, roll 1

Outside Bearing, roll 1 Spinning signs on outer race #1 Spinning signs on outer race #3

Outside Bearing, self aligned Distance Bushing Lubrication Wheel

 Mechanical Failure
From the pictures and some other information seen, we can say the
damage is worst on the Yoke Side than on the Outside, specially on the
bearings.

Both Inside bearings (Yoke side) were most damaged and both of
them show signs of spinning on the outer race, in the outside bearings (Self
aligned rolls) this effect is not shown.

For better understanding of the Parts, names, positions, etc.

attached you can find a simple drawing of the roll, click on the picture to
enlarge:
View of a Roll
YOKE

ROLL
 Roll drawing

YOKE

ROLL
Yoke Side Bearing, Roll 1
Yoke Side Bearing, Roll 1

PIECE MISSING INNER RACE

Yoke Side Bearing, Roll 1

PIECES MISSING INNER RACE

Outside Bearing, roll 1

NOT SIGN OF SPINNING

Spinning signs on outer race #1
Spinning signs on outer race #3
Outside Bearing, self aligned
Distance Bushing

SIGNS OF SPINNING
Lubrication Wheel

CONTACT WITH
DISTANCE BUSHING
 Defective Assembly
None apparent indication of a defective assembly has been seen
yet. Gebr. Pfeiffer is going to take measures of all parts involved and a
report will be sent to plant personnel next week.
 Installation Problems
None apparent indication of a defective installation was noticed,
plus the installation on the field is pretty straight forward.
 Defective Bearings
As soon the third roll arrives to Gebr. Pfeiffer and get disassembled,
an SKF technician will visit the shop to analyze the bearings.

It is important to quote that the design of the inside bearing (Yoke

side) was changed on this new set of rollers installed on last major repair
(Changed by Gebr. Pfeiffer). The calculation for the allowed load for both
bearings (Before and after) will be calculated this week.

The SKF report will be sent to the plant personnel.

 Vibration Problems
This vertical Raw Mill, always runs with high Vibration at the rolls,
but there are not a significant difference on vibration levels changes on the
last 6 months compared to the past.

Rolls are running at the same amount of Vibration as they were

running before.
 Seals Failure
It is a fact that there was a sealing problem on the Rolls, because a
lot of silica was found on all three rolls oil analysis.

It is interesting to see the oil analysis results from the laboratory for
all three rolls, the roll that was found with not apparently damage (Not Iron
particles on the Magnetic bolt) is # 2 Roll which shows the lowest amount of
silica content.

The most important results are shown on the table below:

Material # 1 Roll # 2 Roll # 3 Roll

Silica (PPM) 191 23 51
Iron (PPM) 3956 131 1815

# 1 ROLL OIL ANALYSIS # 2 ROLL OIL ANALYSIS # 3 ROLL OIL ANALYSIS

# 1 Roll Oil Analysis
# 2 Roll Oil Analysis
# 3 Roll Oil Analysis
 Seals Design
The design of seals for Rolls on Vertical Mills is very complicated.
The theory of the design may be is OK. But on the field it is very difficult to
contain the dust outside the bearing housing due to the very hard
environment that these seals are exposed, temperature, abrasion, vibration,
etc.

Gebr. Pfeiffer is going to send a report with their analysis but it is

obvious there is a design problem on the seals due to the amount of silica
that was found inside the rolls after only 6 months of operation.
 Seals Installation
Seals were installed by Gebr. Pfeiffer at their shop. During the
witnesses of the disassembly of the rolls parts, there was not noticed any
problems with seals installation.
 Oil Characteristics
The oil used on the rolls comply with rolls manufacture
recommendation, the oil used is an ISO 1000. This can be seen in slides 25,
26 and 27 (Oil analysis results)
 Cleaning Fan problems
Each Roll has installed a fan to keep the area around the seals free
of dust, this fan blows air trough the Yoke into the roller as seen in the
following pictures, click it to enlarge for explanation details:

AIR FLOW

Al three fans has been operating continuously without problems as

shown on this control room trend:

CONTROL ROOM TREND

Cleaning Fan Yoke holes
 Cleaning Fan operation

AIR FLOW
 Vibration Monitoring
There are continues Vibration Monitoring on all three rolls, this was
not an original feature of the Mill but it was installed by plant request.

There are not significant changes on Overall vibration on any roll.

A full analysis of spectrums, trends, etc. will be done together with

vibration equipment supplier.
 Temperature Monitoring (8)
There is not continues monitoring of Temperature in the bearings of
the Rolls of the Vertical Mill.
 Tribology
There is not way to do an study based on oil analysis because the
frequency of the sample was being taken yearly, even though Gebr-Pfeiffer
do not recommend this test, and there has not been any sample cycle since
the new rolls were installed. The last sample was taken last December.
 Root Causes & Recommendations
Root cause (s)
To determine excatly the Root cause of the problem, more
analysis needs to be done, the necessary information to concluded is:
• SKF Bearing analysis and calculations.
• Air flow calculations for cleaning Fan
• Gebr. Pfeiffer failure report, including third roll inspection, etc.

But After all evidence was collected an analyzed we can say that
some of the root causes of the problems seems to be as following, please
remember we are analyzing two problems (Mechanical failure of bearings
and the fact that the failure was not predicted):

•Dust Seals design: There was evidence of silica inside the rolls, plus
the damage on the bearings is more severe on the Yoke side (Seal
side) than the outside (Self aligning bearings)
•Oil analysis frequency (Predictive)
•None continues monitoring of temperature in place (Predictive)
 Root Causes & Recommendations
Recommendations
For the Mechanical Failure recommendations are as following:

• Plant need to request to Gebr. Pfeiffer to review the seal

arrangement design and improve this system when reparations are
done to the rolls.
• Due to the fact that dust sealing is very problematic in this kind of
applications it is highly recommended to install an oil re-circulation
system for all three rolls with a parallel filtration unit. To do this, the
design of the shaft needs to be changed (This should be requested to
Gebr. Pfeiffer) and an oil re-circulation system needs to be installed.
• Calculations of the volume of air and pressures needs to be revised
on the cleaning fans for the dust seal area.
 Root Causes & Recommendations
Recommendations (Cont.)
For the lack of failure prediction recommendations are as following:

• Trybology frequency needs to be changed to at least quarterly, all

frequencies and pieces of equipment will be revised during CEMEX
Way implementation.
• Install continues temperature monitoring to each roll.