Enhancements in the Performance of Journal Bearing Grease

Author(s):  
Daniel S. Blasko ◽  
David Aindow ◽  
Kuldeep K. Mistry

Wheelsets are removed from service for many reasons by North American Interchange Service. For example, journal bearings can be the cause of wheelset removal when operating temperature or acoustic signatures recorded by wayside detectors exceed certain limits. The Association of American Railroads (AAR) has established 13 failure progression modes to categorize the reason a bearing sets off one of these two detection systems. This study focuses on two failure progression modes: water etch caused by corrosion and issues associated with lubrication (grease). Greases for rail journal bearings are expected to satisfy a wide variety of requirements such as moisture tolerance, mechanical stability, vibration tolerance, range of operating temperatures and oxidation resistance, to name a few. This paper provides the reader an overview of several experiments and tests that were conducted with the goal of extending service life and reducing corrosion, including field tests used in the development of advanced journal bearing greases for the rail industry. One such new grease formulation was tested in the UK with good results.

1993 ◽  
Vol 115 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Dmochowski ◽  
K. Brockwell ◽  
S. DeCamillo ◽  
A. Mikula

In this paper dealing with the tilting pad journal bearing, experimental results are presented which show that, at higher shaft speeds, the leading-edge-groove (LEG) design has significantly lower operating temperatures to those of the conventional design of tilting pad journal bearing. Subsequent theoretical analysis has shown that this reduction in pad operating temperature is the result of feeding cool oil directly to the leading edge of the pad. This has the effect of reducing the amount of hot oil carried over from one pad to the next.


Author(s):  
Martin J. Conlon ◽  
Azzedine Dadouche ◽  
Waldemar M. Dmochowski

This paper evaluates two different journal bearings: a cylindrical bore plain journal bearing and a tri-lobe taper land bearing. Each bearing has the same nominal diameter (89mm) and aspect ratio (L/D = 0.7). The shaft rotational speed ranged from 6krpm to 14krpm and the bearing specific load from 700kPa to 2800kPa. The bearings’ steady-state performance is evaluated according to relative bearing and shaft displacement, bearing operating temperature and power loss. A frequency-domain analysis is used to determine bearing rotordynamic coefficients — it treats the bearing as a mass-spring-damper system. Excitation frequencies range between 20Hz and 350Hz. Ultimately, the tri-lobe taper land bearing offers better stability whereas the cylindrical bore plain journal bearing has a lower eccentricity and runs cooler for a given operating condition. The dynamic properties of the two bearings are found to be similar, although the higher stability of the tri-lobe taper land bearing is also reflected in the dynamic coefficients.


Author(s):  
Biswajit Roy ◽  
Sudip Dey

The precise prediction of a rotor against instability is needed for avoiding the degradation or failure of the system’s performance due to the parametric variabilities of a bearing system. In general, the design of the journal bearing is framed based on the deterministic theoretical analysis. To map the precise prediction of hydrodynamic performance, it is needed to include the uncertain effect of input parameters on the output behavior of the journal bearing. This paper presents the uncertain hydrodynamic analysis of a two-axial-groove journal bearing including randomness in bearing oil viscosity and supply pressure. To simulate the uncertainty in the input parameters, the Monte Carlo simulation is carried out. A support vector machine is employed as a metamodel to increase the computational efficiency. Both individual and compound effects of uncertainties in the input parameters are studied to quantify their effect on the steady-state and dynamic characteristics of the bearing.


Author(s):  
Chris Dawson ◽  
Stuart Inkpen ◽  
Chris Nolan ◽  
David Bonnell

Many different approaches have been adopted for identifying leaks in pipelines. Leak detection systems, however, generally suffer from a number of difficulties and limitations. For existing and new pipelines, these inevitably force significant trade-offs to be made between detection accuracy, operational range, responsiveness, deployment cost, system reliability, and overall effectiveness. Existing leak detection systems frequently rely on the measurement of secondary effects such as temperature changes, acoustic signatures or flow differences to infer the existence of a leak. This paper presents an alternative approach to leak detection employing electromagnetic measurements of the material in the vicinity of the pipeline that can potentially overcome some of the difficulties encountered with existing approaches. This sensing technique makes direct measurements of the material near the pipeline resulting in reliable detection and minimal risk of false alarms. The technology has been used successfully in other industries to make critical measurements of materials under challenging circumstances. A number of prototype sensors were constructed using this technology and they were tested by an independent research laboratory. The test results show that sensors based on this technique exhibit a strong capability to detect oil, and to distinguish oil from water (a key challenge with in-situ sensors).


1990 ◽  
Vol 112 (2) ◽  
pp. 224-229 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Gupta ◽  
C. R. Hammond ◽  
A. Z. Szeri

The aim of this paper is to make available to the industrial designer results of the thermohydrodynamic theory of journal bearings, by providing a simplified, yet accurate model of journal bearing lubrication that can be implemented on a personal computer and be used in an interactive mode. The simplified THD theory we propose consists of two coupled ordinary differential equations for pressure and energy and an algebraic equation for viscosity, which are to be solved iteratively. Bearing load capacity, maximum bearing temperature, maximum pressure, coefficient of friction and lubricant flow rate calculated from this simplified theory compare well with results from a more sophisticated model. We also make comparisons with experimental data on full journal bearings, demonstrating substantial agreement between experiment and simplified theory.


1965 ◽  
Vol 87 (3) ◽  
pp. 568-576 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. H. Vohr ◽  
C. Y. Chow

A differential equation is obtained for the smoothed “overall” pressure distribution around a herringbone-grooved, gas-lubricated journal bearing operating with a variable film thickness. The equation is based on the limiting case of an idealized bearing for which the number of grooves approaches an infinite number. A numerical solution to the differential equation is obtained valid for small eccentricities. This solution includes the case where the journal is undergoing steady circular whirl. In addition to the usual plain bearing parameters L/D, Λ, and whirl speed ratio ω3/(ω1 + ω2), the behavior of a grooved bearing also depends on four additional parameters: The groove angle β, the relative groove width α, the relative groove depth H0, and a compressibility number, Λs, which is based on the relative speed between the grooved and smooth members of the bearing. Results are presented showing bearing radial force and attitude angle as functions of β, α, H0, Λs, Λ, and whirl speed ratio.


1989 ◽  
Vol 111 (3) ◽  
pp. 426-429 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. Kato ◽  
Y. Hori

A computer program for calculating dynamic coefficients of journal bearings is necessary in designing fluid film journal bearings and an accuracy of the program is sometimes checked by the relation that the cross terms of linear damping coefficients of journal bearings are equal to each other, namely “Cxy = Cyx”. However, the condition for this relation has not been clear. This paper shows that the relation “Cxy = Cyx” holds in any type of finite width journal bearing when these are calculated under the following condition: (I) The governing Reynolds equation is linear in pressure or regarded as linear in numerical calculations; (II) Film thickness is given by h = c (1 + κcosθ); and (III) Boundary condition is homogeneous such as p=0 or dp/dn=0, where n denotes a normal to the boundary.


Author(s):  
Jason C. Wilkes ◽  
Dara W. Childs

For several years, researchers have presented predictions showing that using a full tilting-pad journal bearing (TPJB) model (retaining all of the pad degrees of freedom) is necessary to accurately perform stability calculations for a shaft operating on TPJBs. This paper will discuss this issue, discuss the importance of pad and pivot flexibility in predicting impedance coefficients for the tilting-pad journal bearing, present measured changes in bearing clearance with operating temperature, and summarize the differences between measured and predicted frequency dependence of dynamic impedance coefficients. The current work presents recent test data for a 100 mm (4 in) five-pad TPJB tested in load on pad (LOP) configuration. Measured results include bearing clearance as a function of operating temperature, pad clearance and radial displacement of the loaded pad (the pad having the static load vector directed through its pivot), and frequency dependent stiffness and damping. Measured hot bearing clearances are approximately 30% smaller than measured cold bearing clearances and are inversely proportional to pad surface temperature; predicting bearing impedances with a rigid pad and pivot model using these reduced clearances results in overpredicted stiffness and damping coefficients that are several times larger than previous comparisons. The effect of employing a full bearing model versus a reduced bearing model (where only journal degrees of freedom are retained) in a stability calculation for a realistic rotor-bearing system is assessed. For the bearing tested, the bearing coefficients reduced at the frequency of the unstable eigenvalue (subsynchronously reduced) predicted a destabilizing cross-coupled stiffness coefficient at the onset of instability within 1% of the full model, while synchronously reduced coefficients for the lightly loaded bearing required 25% more destabilizing cross-coupled stiffness than the full model to cause system instability. The same stability calculation was performed using measured stiffness and damping coefficients at synchronous and subsynchronous frequencies. These predictions showed that both the synchronously measured stiffness and damping and predictions using the full bearing model were more conservative than the model using subsynchronously measured stiffness and damping, an outcome that is completely opposite from conclusions reached by comparing different prediction models. This contrasting outcome results from a predicted increase in damping with increasing excitation frequency at all speeds and loads; however, this increase in damping with increasing excitation frequency was only measured at the most heavily loaded conditions.


1957 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 494-496
Author(s):  
J. F. Osterle ◽  
Y. T. Chou ◽  
E. A. Saibel

Abstract The Reynolds equation of hydrodynamic theory, modified to take lubricant inertia into approximate account, is applied to the steady-state operation of journal bearings to determine the effect of lubricant inertia on the pressure developed in the lubricant. A simple relationship results, relating this “inertial” pressure to the Reynolds number of the flow. It is found that the inertia effect can be significant in the laminar regime.


2017 ◽  
Vol 140 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Miraskari ◽  
Farzad Hemmati ◽  
Mohamed S. Gadala

To determine the bifurcation types in a rotor-bearing system, it is required to find higher order derivatives of the bearing forces with respect to journal velocity and position. As closed-form expressions for journal bearing force are not generally available, Hopf bifurcation studies of rotor-bearing systems have been limited to simple geometries and cavitation models. To solve this problem, an alternative nonlinear coefficient-based method for representing the bearing force is presented in this study. A flexible rotor-bearing system is presented for which bearing force is modeled with linear and nonlinear dynamic coefficients. The proposed nonlinear coefficient-based model was found to be successful in predicting the bifurcation types of the system as well as predicting the system dynamics and trajectories at spin speeds below and above the threshold speed of instability.


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