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Ball bearing
Contents
1History
o 1.1Industrial era
2Common
3Types
4Motions
5Friction
6Loads
7Speeds
8Play
9Stiffness
10Service life
o 10.1L10 life
o 10.2External factors
11Maintenance and lubrication
o 11.1Rolling-element bearing outer race fault detection
o 11.2Packing
o 11.3Ring oiler
o 11.4Splash lubrication
o 11.5Pressure lubrication
o 11.6Composite bearings
12Types
13See also
14References
15External links
History[edit]
The invention of the rolling bearing, in the form of wooden rollers supporting, or bearing,
an object being moved is of great antiquity and may predate the invention of
a wheel rotating on a plain bearing used for transportation.
Though it is often claimed that the Egyptians used roller bearings in the form of tree
trunks under sleds,[2] this is modern speculation.[3] The Egyptians' own drawings in the
tomb of Djehutihotep show the process of moving massive stone blocks on sledges as
using liquid-lubricated runners which would constitute plain bearings.[4] There are also
Egyptian drawings of plain bearings used with hand drills.[5]
Wheeled vehicles using plain bearings emerged between about 5000 BC and 3000 BC.
The earliest recovered example of a rolling element bearing is a wooden ball
bearing supporting a rotating table from the remains of the Roman Nemi ships in Lake
Nemi, Italy. The wrecks were dated to 40 BC.[6][7]
Leonardo da Vinci incorporated drawings of ball bearings in his design for a helicopter
around the year 1500. This is the first recorded use of bearings in an aerospace design.
However, Agostino Ramelli is the first to have published sketches of roller and thrust
bearings.[2] An issue with ball and roller bearings is that the balls or rollers rub against
each other causing additional friction which can be reduced by enclosing the balls or
rollers within a cage. The captured, or caged, ball bearing was originally described
by Galileo in the 17th century.[citation needed]
The first practical caged-roller bearing was invented in the mid-1740s by horologist John
Harrison for his H3 marine timekeeper. This uses the bearing for a very limited
oscillating motion but Harrison also used a similar bearing in a truly rotary application in
a contemporaneous regulator clock.[citation needed]
Industrial era[edit]
The first modern recorded patent on ball bearings was awarded to Philip Vaughan,
a British inventor and ironmaster who created the first design for a ball bearing
in Carmarthen in 1794. His was the first modern ball-bearing design, with the ball
running along a groove in the axle assembly.[8]
Bearings have played a pivotal role in the nascent Industrial Revolution, allowing the
new industrial machinery to operate efficiently. For example, they saw use for
holding wheel and axle to greatly reduce friction over that of dragging an object by
making the friction act over a shorter distance as the wheel turned.
The first plain and rolling-element bearings were wood closely followed by bronze. Over
their history bearings have been made of many materials
including ceramic, sapphire, glass, steel, bronze, other metals and plastic
(e.g., nylon, polyoxymethylene, polytetrafluoroethylene, and UHMWPE) which are all
used today.
Watch makers produce "jeweled" watches using sapphire plain bearings to reduce
friction thus allowing more precise time keeping.
Even basic materials can have good durability. As examples, wooden bearings can still
be seen today in old clocks or in water mills where the water provides cooling and
lubrication.
Early Timken tapered roller bearing with notched rollers
The first patent for a radial style ball bearing was awarded to Jules Suriray, a Parisian
bicycle mechanic, on 3 August 1869. The bearings were then fitted to the winning
bicycle ridden by James Moore in the world's first bicycle road race, Paris-Rouen, in
November 1869.[9]
In 1883, Friedrich Fischer, founder of FAG, developed an approach for milling and
grinding balls of equal size and exact roundness by means of a suitable production
machine and formed the foundation for creation of an independent bearing industry.
Common[edit]
By far, the most common bearing is the plain bearing, a bearing which uses surfaces in
rubbing contact, often with a lubricant such as oil or graphite. A plain bearing may or
may not be a discrete device. It may be nothing more than the bearing surface of a hole
with a shaft passing through it, or of a planar surface that bears another (in these cases,
not a discrete device); or it may be a layer of bearing metal either fused to the substrate
(semi-discrete) or in the form of a separable sleeve (discrete). With suitable lubrication,
plain bearings often give entirely acceptable accuracy, life, and friction at minimal cost.
Therefore, they are very widely used.
However, there are many applications where a more suitable bearing can improve
efficiency, accuracy, service intervals, reliability, speed of operation, size, weight, and
costs of purchasing and operating machinery.
Thus, there are many types of bearings, with varying shape, material, lubrication,
principle of operation, and so on.
Types[edit]
Animation of ball bearing (Ideal figure without a cage). The inner ring rotates and the outer ring is stationary.
Plain bearing, consisting of a shaft rotating in a hole. There are several specific
styles: bushing, journal bearing, sleeve bearing, rifle bearing, composite bearing;
Rolling-element bearing, in which rolling elements placed between the turning
and stationary races prevent sliding friction. There are two main types:
o Ball bearing, in which the rolling elements are spherical balls;
o Roller bearing, in which the rolling elements are cylindrical, taper or
spherical rollers;
Jewel bearing, a plain bearing in which one of the bearing surfaces is made of an
ultrahard glassy jewel material such as sapphire to reduce friction and wear;
Fluid bearing, a noncontact bearing in which the load is supported by a gas or
liquid (i.e. air bearing);
Magnetic bearing, in which the load is supported by a magnetic field;
Flexure bearing, in which the motion is supported by a load element which
bends.
Motions[edit]
Common motions permitted by bearings are:
Friction[edit]
Reducing friction in bearings is often important for efficiency, to reduce wear and to
facilitate extended use at high speeds and to avoid overheating and premature failure of
the bearing. Essentially, a bearing can reduce friction by virtue of its shape, by its
material, or by introducing and containing a fluid between surfaces or by separating the
surfaces with an electromagnetic field.
Loads[edit]
Bearing design varies depending on the size and directions of the forces that they are
required to support. Forces can be predominately radial, axial (thrust bearings),
or bending moments perpendicular to the main axis.
Speeds[edit]
Different bearing types have different operating speed limits. Speed is typically specified
as maximum relative surface speeds, often specified ft/s or m/s. Rotational bearings
typically describe performance in terms of the product DN where D is the mean
diameter (often in mm) of the bearing and N is the rotation rate in revolutions per
minute.
Generally, there is considerable speed range overlap between bearing types. Plain
bearings typically handle only lower speeds, rolling element bearings are faster,
followed by fluid bearings and finally magnetic bearings which are limited ultimately by
centripetal force overcoming material strength.
Play[edit]
Some applications apply bearing loads from varying directions and accept only limited
play or "slop" as the applied load changes. One source of motion is gaps or "play" in the
bearing. For example, a 10 mm shaft in a 12 mm hole has 2 mm play.
Allowable play varies greatly depending on the use. As an example, a wheelbarrow
wheel supports radial and axial loads. Axial loads may be hundreds of newtons force
left or right, and it is typically acceptable for the wheel to wobble by as much as 10 mm
under the varying load. In contrast, a lathe may position a cutting tool to ±0.002 mm
using a ball lead screw held by rotating bearings. The bearings support axial loads of
thousands of newtons in either direction and must hold the ball lead screw to
±0.002 mm across that range of loads
Stiffness[edit]
A second source of motion is elasticity in the bearing itself. For example, the balls in a
ball bearing are like stiff rubber, and under load deform from round to a slightly flattened
shape. The race is also elastic and develops a slight dent where the ball presses on it.
The stiffness of a bearing is how the distance between the parts which are separated by
the bearing varies with applied load. With rolling element bearings this is due to the
strain of the ball and race. With fluid bearings it is due to how the pressure of the fluid
varies with the gap (when correctly loaded, fluid bearings are typically stiffer than rolling
element bearings).
Service life[edit]
Fluid and magnetic bearings
Main articles: Fluid bearing and Magnetic bearing
Fluid and magnetic bearings can have practically indefinite service lives. In practice,
there are fluid bearings supporting high loads in hydroelectric plants that have been in
nearly continuous service since about 1900 and which show no signs of wear. [citation needed]
Rolling element bearings
Rolling element bearing life is determined by load, temperature, maintenance,
lubrication, material defects, contamination, handling, installation and other factors.
These factors can all have a significant effect on bearing life. For example, the service
life of bearings in one application was extended dramatically by changing how the
bearings were stored before installation and use, as vibrations during storage caused
lubricant failure even when the only load on the bearing was its own weight; [16] the
resulting damage is often false brinelling.[17] Bearing life is statistical: several samples of
a given bearing will often exhibit a bell curve of service life, with a few samples showing
significantly better or worse life. Bearing life varies because microscopic structure and
contamination vary greatly even where macroscopically they seem identical.
L10 life[edit]
Bearings are often specified to give an "L10" life (outside the USA, it may be referred to
as "B10" life.) This is the life at which ten percent of the bearings in that application can
be expected to have failed due to classical fatigue failure (and not any other mode of
failure like lubrication starvation, wrong mounting etc.), or, alternatively, the life at which
ninety percent will still be operating. The L10 life of the bearing is theoretical life and
may not represent service life of the bearing. Bearings are also rated using C 0 (static
loading) value. This is the basic load rating as a reference, and not an actual load value.
Plain bearings
For plain bearings, some materials give much longer life than others. Some of the John
Harrison clocks still operate after hundreds of years because of the lignum vitae wood
employed in their construction, whereas his metal clocks are seldom run due to
potential wear.
Flexure bearings
Flexure bearings rely on elastic properties of a material. Flexure bearings bend a piece
of material repeatedly. Some materials fail after repeated bending, even at low loads,
but careful material selection and bearing design can make flexure bearing life
indefinite.
Short-life bearings
Although long bearing life is often desirable, it is sometimes not necessary. Harris
2001 describes a bearing for a rocket motor oxygen pump that gave several hours life,
far in excess of the several tens of minutes life needed. [16]
Composite bearings
Depending on the customized specifications (backing material and PTFE
compounds), composite bearings can operate up to 30 years without maintenance.
Oscillating bearings
For bearings which are used in oscillating applications, customized approaches to
calculate L10 are used.[18]
External factors[edit]
The service life of the bearing is affected by many parameters that are not controlled by
the bearing manufacturers. For example, bearing mounting, temperature, exposure to
external environment, lubricant cleanliness and electrical currents through bearings etc.
High frequency PWM inverters can induce currents in a bearing, which can be
suppressed by the use of ferrite chokes.
The temperature and terrain of the micro-surface will determine the amount of friction by
the touching of solid parts.
Certain elements and fields reduce friction while increasing speeds.
Strength and mobility help determine the amount of load the bearing type can carry.
Alignment factors can play a damaging role in wear and tear, yet overcome by computer
aid signaling and non-rubbing bearing types, such as magnetic levitation or air field
pressure.
Types[edit]
There are many different types of bearings. Newer versions of more enabling designs
are in development being tested, which will reduce friction, increase bearing load,
increase momentum build-up, and speed.
Stiffnes
Type Description Friction Speed Life Notes
s†
Depends
on
materials Widely used,
Good,
and relatively high
Rubbing surfaces, provide
constructio friction, suffers
usually with d wear
n, PTFE from stiction in
lubricant; some is low, Low to very high
has a Low to some applications.
Plain bearings use but – depends upon
coefficient very Depending upon
bearing pumped lubrication some application and
of friction high the application, the
and behave slack is lubrication
~0.05– lifetime can be
similarly to fluid normall
0.35, higher or lower
bearings. y
depending than rolling
present
upon element bearings.
fillers
added
Rolling
coefficient
of friction
with steel
can be
~0.005
(adding Modera
resistance Good, te to
Moderate to high
due to but high Used for higher
Rolling Ball or rollers are (depends on
seals, some (often moment loads than
element used to prevent or lubrication, often
packed slack is require plain bearings with
bearing minimise rubbing requires
grease, usually s lower friction
maintenance)
preload present cooling
and )
misalignm
ent can
increase
friction to
as much as
0.125)
Very
high
(usuall Can fail quickly
Virtually infinite
y due to grit or dust
in some
limited or other
Fluid is forced Zero applications, may
to a contaminants.
Fluid between two faces friction at Very wear at
few Maintenance free
bearing and held in by edge zero speed, high startup/shutdown
hundre in continuous use.
seal low in some cases.
d feet Can handle very
Often negligible
per large loads with
maintenance.
second low friction.
at/by
seal)
Zero
friction at
zero speed,
but
constant
power for
levitation, Active magnetic
eddy bearings (AMB)
Faces of bearing
currents Indefinite. need considerable
Magneti are kept separate by No
are often Maintenance free. power. Electrodyn
c magnets Low practica
induced (with electromag amic
bearing (electromagnets or l limit
when nets) bearings (EDB) do
eddy currents)
movement not require
occurs, but external power.
may be
negligible
if magnetic
field is
quasi-
static
†
Stiffness is the amount that the gap varies when the load on the bearing changes, it is distinct from
the friction of the bearing.
See also[edit]
Axlebox
Ball bearing – Type of rolling-element bearing that uses balls to maintain the
separation between the bearing races.
Ball spline – Type of linear motion bearing that can transmit torque
Contact mechanics – Study of the deformation of solids that touch each other
Journal bearing – Simplest type of bearing, comprising just a bearing surface and
no rolling elements
Hinge – Mechanical bearing that connects two solid objects, typically allowing
only a limited angle of rotation between them
Main bearing
Needle roller bearing
Pillow block bearing
Pitch bearing – Component connecting a turbine blade to the hub allowing pitch
variation
Plain bearing – Simplest type of bearing, comprising just a bearing surface and
no rolling elements
Race (bearing) – Track in a bearing along which the rolling elements ride
Rolamite – Low friction bearing technology
Rolling-element bearing
Scrollerwheel
Shock pulse method
Slewing bearing – Rotational support element for directional alignment
Spherical plain bearing – A bearing that allow limited angular rotation orthogonal
to the shaft axis
Spherical roller bearing – Rolling-element bearing that tolerates angular
misalignment
Spiral groove bearing – Hydrodynamic bearings using spiral grooves to develop
lubricant pressure
References