Vibrating Cooling Towers
Date: April 1, 2014
Location: ,
The customer complaint revealed a “sway” in one of the 3 cooling towers that they had on site. Upon arrival, vibration testing confirmed an excessive peak at the fan frequency of 350 CPM. Twenty pounds of weight was required to return the fan to a balanced condition; which is a very large correction.
Further investigation revealed that this cooling tower is the only one that is used year round. Coincidently, these cooling towers featured hollow blades and connecting rods to the fan hub allowing birds to nest inside the blades over the winter. The nests were then cleaned from the blades and caps were installed on the ends of the hubs to prevent undesired occupancy.