S-Flex Buries The (Dog) Bone

By Day & Zimmermann Power Services

It's the age-old scenario – a nagging problem no one has been able to solve for years. Such is the case for the dogbone belt used at the turbine-to-condenser expansion joint in power plants all over the world. The belt consists of a flat piece of rubber and fabric with a knob at each end, giving it the look of a dog's bone.

"They just never fit right,"says Bob Hahn, senior VP and GM of condenser services for the Atlantic Group, Norflok, Va. As a field service engineer for Ingersoll-Rand and Ecolaire Condenser, Hahn spent years designing condensers and repairing and replacing their dogbone expansion joints. Almost without exception, he found that the clamping bars holding dogbone expansion belts in place were misaligned. Solving this problem became Hahn's mission.