Overview Of Bearing

Plain bearings use 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. For example, rolling-element bearings use spheres or drums rolling between the parts to reduce friction; reduced friction allows tighter tolerances and thus higher precision than a plain bearing, and reduced wear extends the time over which the machine stays accurate. Plain bearings are commonly made of varying types of metal or plastic depending on the load, how corrosive or dirty the environment is, and so on. In addition, bearing friction and life may be altered dramatically by the type and application of lubricants. For example, a lubricant may improve bearing friction and life, but for food processing a bearing may be lubricated by an inferior food-safe lubricant to avoid food contamination; in other situations a bearing may be run without lubricant because continuous lubrication is not feasible, and lubricants attract dirt that damages the bearings.

Principles of operation

Animation of ball bearing

There are at least six common principles of operation:

• plain bearing, also known by the specific styles: bushings, journal bearings, sleeve bearings, rifle bearings
• rolling-element bearings such as ball bearings and roller bearings
• jewel bearings, in which the load is carried by rolling the axle slightly off-center
• fluid bearings, in which the load is carried by a gas or liquid
• magnetic bearings, in which the load is carried by a magnetic field
• flexure bearings, in which the motion is supported by a load element which bends.

Motions

Common motions permitted by bearings are:

• Axial rotation e.g. shaft rotation
• Linear motion e.g. drawer
• spherical rotation e.g. ball and socket joint
• hinge motion e.g. door, elbow, knee

Friction

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.

• By shape, gains advantage usually by using spheres or rollers, or by forming flexure bearings.
• By material, exploits the nature of the bearing material used. (An example would be using plastics that have low surface friction.)
• By fluid, exploits the low viscosity of a layer of fluid, such as a lubricant or as a pressurized medium to keep the two solid parts from touching, or by reducing the normal force between them.
• By fields, exploits electromagnetic fields, such as magnetic fields, to keep solid parts from touching.

Combinations of these can even be employed within the same bearing. An example of this is where the cage is made of plastic, and it separates the rollers/balls, which reduce friction by their shape and finish.

Loads

A block bearing with provisions for fixing it

Bearings vary greatly over the size and directions of forces that they can support.
Forces can be predominately radial, axial (thrust bearings) or Bending moments perpendicular to the main axis.

Speeds

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 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

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 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 ±0.02 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

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

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.
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;the resulting damage is often false brinelling. 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.
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 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.
Although long bearing life is often desirable, it is sometimes not necessary. Harris 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.
Bearings are often manufactured to what is called an "L10" life factor.

Maintenance

Many bearings require periodic maintenance to prevent premature failure, although some such as fluid or magnetic bearings may require little maintenance.
Most bearings in high cycle operations need periodic lubrication and cleaning, and may require adjustment to minimise the effects of wear.
Bearing life is often much better when the bearing is kept clean and well-lubricated. However, many applications make good maintenance difficult. For example bearings in the conveyor of a rock crusher are exposed continually to hard abrasive particles. Cleaning is of little use because cleaning is expensive, yet the bearing is contaminated again as soon as the conveyor resumes operation. Thus, a good maintenance program might lubricate the bearings frequently but clean them never.