Centrifugal pump casing

Abstract

The casing of a centrifugal pump has a shell with a cylindrical periphery having one or more recessed facets with flat or spherical surfaces which are welded to end portions of pipes by circumferentially complete machine-made seams each of which is intersected, in its entirety, by at least one imaginary plane that is normal to the axis of the respective pipe. This renders it possible to use automatic welding equipment and to readily inspect the quality of the connection between the shell and a pipe. The surface of the facet can be formed with a circumferentially complete groove to receive a transducer serving to generate signals denoting the intensity of penetrative radiation which has penetrated through the seam from a source of such radiation in the interior of the respective pipe and in register with the respective seam. The shell is suspended on the arms of a foundation and such arms extend into additional facets which are recessed into the periphery of the shell. The additional facets are bounded by such surfaces or are dimensioned in such a way that the shell can move relative to the foundation and/or vice versa in response to the application of thermally induced or pressure-induced stresses, for example, in response to heating or cooling when the heat expansion coefficient of the material of the shell is different from that of the material of the arms of the foundation.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.