Influence of solid particle contamination on the wear process in water lubricated marine strut bearings with NBR and PTFE bushes

Abstract

This paper reports on a study of the influence of solid particle contamination on the wear process in water-lubricated slide bearings (steel-acrylonitrile-butadiene rubber (NBR) and steel-polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE)). To compare the wear of the shaft journal and bushes (NBR and PTFE) when lubricated with fresh water and contaminated water, an experiment was carried out to identify key factors that influence the state of wear of slide bearing. The amount of wear was checked by means of geometric structure measurements on the journals, namely, roughness profile measurements using both a contact profilometer and an optical microscope. The obtained results enabled correlations between the material comprising the sliding sleeve, roughness of the journals and contamination inside the water-lubricated slide bearings.

Study on elastohydrodynamic lubrication performance of double-layer composite water-lubricated bearings

“…But rubber bearings have large bush deformation and low hydrodynamic load carrying capacity, and the large friction coefficient usually causes high power consumption and noise [1,2]. In order to improve the bearing load carrying capacity and reduce power consumption, some turbine and marine pump waterlubricated bearings use plastic such as polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) and ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) as bush material [3][4][5][6]. While plastics have low friction coefficient, but worse compliance and damping properties than rubber.…”