Self Adapting Mechanical Step Bearings for Variations in Load
As the application of small-scale and precision technologies increases, the need will grow for bearings which are able to provide precision control of their location. At the micro and nano-scale there is a need for new bearing technologies to reduce friction and wear, and provide precision control of bearing motion. This control can be provided by electronically controlled actuators and sensors, but then the system is dependant on the reliability of the electronics. This work uses numerical methods to research the design and behavior of self adapting smart step bearings. These step bearings are designed to change their surface profiles to achieve an optimal or controlled behavior, without the use electronics or external control. The bearing changes its profile to control the film height of the bearing to a near constant value for different loads. The result is a self adapting step bearing design that may be applied at multiple scales for use in a wide variety of machine components. The numerical simulation shows that the self adapting step bearing is able to autonomously adapt in real time to dynamic loads and maintain a desired film thickness with a relatively small amount of deviation. The self adapting step bearing also exhibits smaller dynamic responses to transient loads in comparison to a conventional static geometry step bearing.