Has anyone seen a failure of a mechanical seal which is located at the close couple of a submersible motor. What can cause the ceramic hard face broken? Taking vibe cannot be done because it's underwater. Is monitoring motor current & discharge pressure sufficient to detect early signs of failure for this motor?

http://maintenanceforums.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/119103451/m/9001053162

Holy moly, those are some zoomed in pictures! Afraid I can't offer you much insight as to what may have caused failure of the mechanical seal. However, have you considered adding permanently mounted accels once the unit is pulled for repairs? You could grab readings from a termination box topside.

Good luck.

Bighurt

Actually I didn't enlarge the pics. They are already big when I pasted them last time. But maybe they are good for some trained eyes to see the wear patterns on the surfaces. I did'nt notice anything unusual patterns or in other words it seems to be even wear. Let's wait comments from others who may have seen something like this.

Btw, do you have the specs for the accelerometer which can be submerged in seawater?