Reliability Improvement of Rotor Supports by Combining Rolling-Element Bearings and Fluid-Film Bearings

2014 ◽  
Vol 630 ◽  
pp. 188-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roman Polyakov ◽  
Leonid Savin ◽  
Denis Shutin

Reliability of rotating machinery is determined to a considerable degree by the bearing units. For several applications the requirements in rotation speed, bearing load and maximal vibration level are so extreme that neither rolling-element bearings nor fluid-film bearings could provide necessary performance characteristics during all regimes of operation. Hybrid bearings, which are a combination of rolling-element and fluid-film bearings, can improve performance characteristics and reliability of the rotor-bearing systems. The aim of this work is to analyze the advantages and disadvantages of the hybrid bearings. Known real applications of hybrid bearings are discussed. Analysis shows that depending on the application different hybrid bearing types could improve dynamic characteristics and life time of the bearing unit, increase load capacity and DN limit of the rolling-element bearing.

Author(s):  
Roman Polyakov ◽  
Leonid Savin ◽  
Alex Fetisov

Reliability of rotating machinery is determined to a considerable degree by the bearing units. For several applications the requirements in rotational speed, bearing load and maximal vibration level are so extreme that neither rolling-element bearings nor fluid-film bearings could provide necessary operating characteristics during all regimes of operation. Hybrid bearings, which are a combination of rolling-element and fluid-film bearings, can improve performance characteristics and reliability of the rotor-bearing systems. A hybrid bearing, where a rolling-element bearing and a fluid-film bearing are positioned parallel to the vector of external load (PLEX), has the following advantages compared to a single bearing, whether rolling-element or fluid-film one: increase of life expectancy, load capacity increase, friction reduction, thermal regime enhancement, increase of stiffness, and damping properties. The present paper presents the results of theoretical and numerical research of friction characteristics of PLEX in mixed sliding and rolling friction, i.e. combination of viscous and rolling contact friction, regime. The conditions of minimum friction effect occurrence have been substantiated, and rational relations between characteristics of hybrid rolling-element bearings and fluid-film bearings needed for provision of such effect have been experimentally proven. Finally, the paper presents recommendations regarding design of such hybrid bearings for heavily loaded bearing nodes of rolling mills.


Author(s):  
Thom M. Eldridge ◽  
Andrew Olsen ◽  
Michael Carney

Morton Effect is a known rotordynamic phenomenon associated with fluid film bearings, where viscous heating creates a uni-directional temperature rise in the bearing journal, leading to thermal growth and subsequent bow of the rotor. This results in an unbalance distribution that exacerbates the original unbalance, increasing the heating and bow, resulting in an unstable, or self-amplifying, response. Heretofore, this phenomenon has only been reported in fluid film bearings, as it is traditionally associated with the viscous heating from shearing of the oil. There is also similar behavior associated with phenomenon named the Newkirk Effect where the same mechanics of heating, thermal growth and bowing of a shaft occurs, but the source of heating is a labyrinth rub. This paper describes an incident where such a series of interactions was experienced with a rolling-element bearing (REB). Instead of being driven by viscous shearing of the oil through the minimum film clearance, the uni-directional heating of the rotor results from unbalance and the sliding or dynamic friction of the balls on the inner race or rub of a near-by seal. Rotordynamic analysis was used to derive a correlation between measured vibration levels and temperature rise resulting in predictable bowing of the shaft in a 45,000 RPM fixed speed 250 kW microturbine having an overhung rotor supported by two rolling element bearings. Vibration response was measured with proximity probes along the rotor and temperature predictions were verified against physical evidence in the bearing races. The information gained in this effort was used to establish assembly tolerance and vibration acceptance criteria for factory testing of the turbine. This behavior has internally been described as “REB Morton Effect.” The paper describes the vibration investigation; bearing evaluation; rotordynamic modeling, analysis and verification; design and assembly corrections, and subsequent testing.


1989 ◽  
Vol 111 (2) ◽  
pp. 251-256 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. G. Harker ◽  
J. L. Sandy

Rolling element bearings require distinctly different techniques for monitoring and diagnostics from those used for fluid-film type bearings. A description of these techniques and the instrumentation used to acquire the necessary data is provided for comparison. Also included are some case studies to illustrate how these techniques are applied.


Lubricants ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 18
Author(s):  
Eckhard Schüler ◽  
Olaf Berner

In high speed, high load fluid-film bearings, the laminar-turbulent flow transition can lead to a considerable reduction of the maximum bearing temperatures, due to a homogenization of the fluid-film temperature in radial direction. Since this phenomenon only occurs significantly in large bearings or at very high sliding speeds, means to achieve the effect at lower speeds have been investigated in the past. This paper shows an experimental investigation of this effect and how it can be used for smaller bearings by optimized eddy grooves, machined into the bearing surface. The investigations were carried out on a Miba journal bearing test rig with Ø120 mm shaft diameter at speeds between 50 m/s–110 m/s and at specific bearing loads up to 4.0 MPa. To investigate the potential of this technology, additional temperature probes were installed at the crucial position directly in the sliding surface of an up-to-date tilting pad journal bearing. The results show that the achieved surface temperature reduction with the optimized eddy grooves is significant and represents a considerable enhancement of bearing load capacity. This increase in performance opens new options for the design of bearings and related turbomachinery applications.


2006 ◽  
Vol 129 (1) ◽  
pp. 106-111 ◽  
Author(s):  
Koichi Matsuda ◽  
Shinya Kijimoto ◽  
Yoichi Kanemitsu

The whirl instability occurs at higher rotating speeds for a full circular fluid-film journal bearing, and many types of clearance configuration have been proposed to solve this instability problem. A clearance configuration of fluid-film journal bearings is optimized in a sense of enhancing the stability of the full circular bearing at high rotational speeds. A performance index is chosen as the sum of the squared whirl-frequency ratios over a wide range of eccentricity ratios, and a Fourier series is used to represent an arbitrary clearance configuration of fluid-film bearings. An optimization problem is then formulated to find the Fourier coefficients to minimize the index. The designed bearing has a clearance configuration similar to that of an offset two-lobe bearing for smaller length-to-diameter ratios. It is shown that the designed bearing cannot destabilize the Jeffcott rotor at any high rotating speed for a wide range of eccentricity ratio. The load capacity of the designed bearings is nearly in the same magnitude as that of the full circular bearing for smaller length-to-diameter ratios. The whirl-frequency ratios of the designed bearing are very sensitive to truncating higher terms of the Fourier series for some eccentricity ratio. The designed bearings successfully enhance the stability of a full circular bearing and are free from the whirl instability.


Author(s):  
Yuan Lan ◽  
Xiaohong Han ◽  
Weiwei Zong ◽  
Xiaojian Ding ◽  
Xiaoyan Xiong ◽  
...  

Rolling element bearings constitute the key parts on rotating machinery, and their fault diagnosis is of great importance. In many real bearing fault diagnosis applications, the number of fault data is much less than the number of normal data, i.e. the data are imbalanced. Many traditional diagnosis methods will get low accuracy because they have a natural tendency to favor the majority class by assuming balanced class distribution or equal misclassification cost. To deal with imbalanced data, in this article, a novel two-step fault diagnosis framework is proposed to diagnose the status of rolling element bearings. Our proposed framework consists of two steps for fault diagnosis, where Step 1 makes use of weighted extreme learning machine in an effort to classify the normal or abnormal categories, and Step 2 further diagnoses the underlying anomaly in detail by using preliminary extreme learning machine. In addition, gravitational search algorithm is applied to further extract the significant features and determine the optimal parameters of the weighted extreme learning machine and extreme learning machine classifiers. The effectiveness of our proposed approach is testified on the raw data collected from the rolling element bearing experiments conducted in our Institute, and the empirical results show that our approach is really fast and can achieve the diagnosis accuracies more than 96%.


Author(s):  
Y Zhou ◽  
J Chen ◽  
G M Dong ◽  
W B Xiao ◽  
Z Y Wang

The vibration signals of rolling element bearings are random cyclostationary when they have faults. Also, statistical properties of the signals change periodically with time. The accurate analysis of time-varying signals is an essential pre-requisite for the fault diagnosis and hence safe operation of rolling element bearings. The Wigner distribution is probably most widely used among the Cohen’s class in order to describe how the spectral content of a signal changes over time. However, the basic nature of such signals causes significant interfering cross-terms, which do not permit a straightforward interpretation of the energy distribution. To overcome this difficulty, the Wigner–Ville distribution (WVD) based on the cyclic spectral density (CSD) is discussed in this article. It is shown that the improved WVD, based on CSD of a long time series, can render the time–frequency distribution less susceptible to noise, and restrain the cross-terms in the time–frequency domain. Simulation and experiment of the rolling element-bearing fault diagnosis are performed, and the results indicate the validity of WVD based on CSD in time–frequency analysis for bearing fault detection.


2021 ◽  
Vol 143 (11) ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Dindar ◽  
K. Chaudhury ◽  
I. Hong ◽  
A. Kahraman ◽  
C. Wink

Abstract In this study, an experimental methodology is presented to separate various components of the power loss of a gearbox. The methodology relies on two separate measurements. One is designed to measure total power loss of a gearbox housing a single spur gear pair under both loaded and unloaded conditions such that load-independent (spin) and load-dependent (mechanical) components can be separated. With the assumption that gear pair and rolling element bearings constitute the bulk of the gearbox power loss, a second measurement system designed to quantify rolling element bearing losses is proposed. With this setup, spin and mechanical power losses of rolling element bearings used in the gearbox experiments are measured. Combining the sets of gearbox and bearing data, power loss components attributable to the gear pair and rolling element bearings are quantified as a function of speed and torque. The results indicate that all gear and bearing related components are significant and a methodology such as the one proposed in this study is warranted.


2019 ◽  
Vol 103 (1) ◽  
pp. 003685041989219
Author(s):  
Li Cheng ◽  
Xintao Xia ◽  
Liang Ye

Rolling element bearings are used in all rotating machinery, and the degradation performance of rolling element bearings directly affects the performance of the machine. Therefore, high reliability prediction of the performance degradation trend of rolling element bearings has become an urgent research problem. However, the degradation characteristics of the rolling element bearings vibration time series are difficult to extract, and the mechanism of performance degradation is very complicated. The accurate physical model is difficult to establish. In view of the above reasons, based on the vibration performance data of rolling element bearings, a model of bearing performance degradation trend parameter based on wavelet denoising and Weibull distribution is established. Then, the phase space reconstruction of the series of bearing performance degradation trend parameter is carried out, and the prognosis is obtained by the improved adding weighted first-order local prediction method. The experimental results show that the bearing vibration performance degradation parameter can accurately depict the degradation trend of the bearing, and the reliability level is 91.55%; and the prediction of bearing performance degradation trend parameter is satisfactory: the mean relative error is only 0.0053% and the maximum relative error is less than 0.03%.


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