Tribological Study On Water Lubricating Bearing Material In Composite UHMWPE

The ship stern bears the ship shaft, which is one of the key links hull internal andexternal power exchange. Compared with the center line of the bearing, the propellershaft overhanging arrangement, the stress of the propeller to work and the weight ofthe propeller and shaft system make the propeller shaft centerline get certaindeviation. What’s more, the bending and misalignments of the center line make theuneven distribution of bearing larger load, thus seriously affecting the service life ofthe bearing. But the stern bearing maintenance belongs to the projects which areoperated below the water line. These projects not only acquire the higher cost ofrepairs, but also take longer periods. So the reliability and service life of the sternbearing have become one of the important factors that influence the efficiency of shipoperations.With the contrast of other polymer materials, UHWMPE possesses excellentimpact resistance, good wear resistance performance, self lubrication, which alsohave good resistance to low temperature, chemical corrosion resistance, and stresscracking, the advantages of anti-adhesion, good quality. The UHWMPE is widelyused in many fields, such as chemical industry, medicine, textile, mining, metallurgy,construction, electric power, water conservancy, coal and other industries. But themechanical performance is affected significantly by temperature and time. Hightemperature and long time may make the material easy to produce creep, thus makingthe material’s production processing difficultly. Therefore, it is necessary to adddifferent materials to make appropriate improvement in the UHWMPE. It is also agood way to improve the performance of UHWMPE, which under the condition ofwater lubrication friction its four aspects of wearing properties, bearing capacity,sediment resistance and processability have significantly enhanced.This paper mainly studies the performances of the compound UHWMPE waterlubricated materials, which are friction bearing and wearing, vibration and otherproperties, the conclusions are as follows:According to the current research results and its practical experience, this paperestablishes a set of molding process. In the SSB-100type water lubricated stern test machine, the friction wearingperformance of composite block of UHWMPE were tested under different conditions.Under the same load, block decreases as the speed and stability become lower. At thesame speed, as the load increases, the wear quantity was reduced. These experimentalresults demonstrate UHWMPE composite has good friction and its wear performanceis better.In the SSB-100type ship stern test machine, the vibration of compoundUHWMPE was tested under extreme conditions, the vibration frequency are mainlyconcentrated in0~800Hz which is the frequency range.In order to research how rubber ratio influences the performance of compoundUHWMPE. The experiment proves that the hardness of composite UHWMPEdecreases with the higher percentage of rubber, while the tensile strength decreaseswhen the proportion of rubber increases. In conclusion, with the rubber percentageincreases, the friction wearing performance of compound UHWMPE improves.