The Most Common Problems of Flanges

There are big differences between the modern industry and the traditional industry. Most current production is the continuous production, which requires the equipment to have great workload and brings various kinds of problems to equipment and machinery at the same time. The flange is a very important part in the machinery equipment and it plays a fixed role in the facilities. However, there are always a lot of problems occurring on flanges when they are operated in the continuous production, although people have already known some methods of avoiding these problems.

One of the most common problems when flanges are used is the size problem which often occurs in the welding processes of flanges. When the flange is welded, some part of the flange will protrude inside the flange, which will greatly influence the performance of the flange when it is used later, and may even bring the corrosion problem to the flange. Thus, this problem must be paid close attention to, or serious problems may be triggered in the production practice.

Another frequently occurring problem is that flanges will wear and tear in the continuous production, which is an obvious problem able to be predicted and unable to be avoided in the production practice. Thus, it requires that people are supposed to have the clear awareness of this problem, to try their best to slow down the wearing process of flanges and to minimize the negative effects of wear on production. 

The wear forms of flanges can be divided into several kinds, and we mainly introduce the corrosion wear and fatigue wear of flanges to you today.

Corrosion wear
In the corrosive environment, the corrosion and wear caused due to the chemical reaction or electrochemical reaction of the friction surface's material is known as the corrosion wear, which can be further classified into oxidation wear, fretting wear and hydrogen wear.

Fatigue wear 
There is friction between the two contact surfaces one of which is rolling and the other of which is sliding. Under the effect of the alternating contact stress, the fatigue will occur on the surfaces of materials, which will cause the fatigue wear, also known as the contact fatigue wear. The parts such as the surface of the gear, the surface of the bearing, cam, etc. are easy to have the fatigue wear problem.

Once the wear problem happens, the general methods of dealing with this problem is to change the sealing elements inside the flanges or to use the sealant. But different methods should be adopted according to the specific circumstances.