John Crane, the flow-control engineering business of FTSE 100 group Smiths, says it has developed a validated method for analysing the drivetrains of rotating equipment that more accurately predicts how machines will behave in operation — an approach it claims can reduce the risk of failure and unplanned downtime in industries such as oil and gas, LNG and power generation.
Announcing the development from Dubai, the company framed the work as closing a long-standing gap between how drivetrains are modelled on paper and how they actually perform once running. As rotating systems grow more complex — particularly those operating across variable speeds — predicting real-world behaviour has become harder, and traditional models built on fixed assumptions can leave operators exposed to vibration problems, shortened asset life and outages.
At the centre of the method is a new way of analysing torsional disc coupling stiffness — a measure of how a coupling resists twisting forces within a drivetrain. Conventional analysis treats that stiffness as a single fixed value. John Crane says its approach instead accounts for how stiffness changes under different operating conditions and levels of torque, combining computer modelling with static and dynamic testing and real operational data to build a more representative picture of a system.
The result, the company says, is that engineers can predict critical frequencies and system behaviour with greater precision, catching problems that might otherwise surface only during commissioning or once a machine is in service. John Crane said the method was developed over three years and validated across analytical modelling, physical testing and live customer deployments, in collaboration with original equipment manufacturers and operators.
The company acknowledged that aspects of torsional stiffness behaviour have been examined in academic research before, but said its contribution is the validation of the approach through both physical testing and real-world use rather than theory alone.
“This is a significant advancement in how drivetrain behaviour is understood and predicted,” said Steve Pennington, global engineering coupling manager at John Crane. “For years, the industry has relied on simplified assumptions that do not fully reflect real operating conditions. By validating this methodology through testing and live applications, we are giving customers a far more accurate and reliable understanding of system behaviour.”
For operators of critical rotating equipment — the pumps, compressors and turbines that run continuously in energy and process plants — even short stoppages can be costly, and John Crane pitched improved predictive accuracy as a way to raise reliability and support better decisions during design and commissioning. The company said the method is already in use.
John Crane, part of Smiths Group, supplies mechanical seals, couplings, filtration systems and related services to the energy and process industries, with more than 200 sites across some 50 countries. The development reflects a broader industry shift toward variable-speed equipment and data-driven engineering, where the accuracy of a model before a machine ever starts is increasingly treated as a reliability tool in its own right.
