Spherical Plain Bearing Friction And Wear Simulation And Experimental Analysis

Bearing is one of the basic components for industrial applications and plays an important role in the national production. Joint bearing is one type of spherical plain bearings and the friction and wear condition of its working spherical surfaces has a direct impact on its working performance. With the development of computer simulation technology and tribology, bearing CAE technology and virtual & simulation design technology is becoming a key technology which promotes the development of bearing industry. However, there were few reports about simulation analysis on friction and wear properties of joint bearing. Therefore, based on current research on tribology simulation, 3-D fully coupled thermal-mechanical analysis and wear simulation analysis of spherical plain bearing with woven fabric liner have been done in this article.At first, the calculation method for the elastic constants of woven fabric liner, finite element method about coupled thermal-mechanical analysis and wear simulation were summarized. And then, based on the finite element software ABAQUS, with secondary development of user subroutine FRIC, 3-D fully coupled thermal-mechanical analysis of self-lubricating spherical plain bearing with woven fabric liner was achieved. At last, wear rate of PTFE/KEVLAR woven fabric liner was measured with pin-on-disc test, and based on the finite element software ABAQUS, with secondary development of user subroutine UMESHMOTION, wear simulation about pin-on-disc wear test of woven fabric liner and self-lubricating spherical plain bearing with woven fabric liner were done. And then the relation between woven fabric liner pin-on-disc wear life and its spherical plain bearing wear life was studied. The different wear simulation results of spherical plain bearing were analyzed in order to study the effect of constant wear rate, varialbe wear rate and temperature rise caused by friction.By studying the above contents, several conculsions were summarized as follows:(1) Micromechanics of composites bending model could effectively predict the elastic constants of woven fabric liner.(2) Comparation between simulation results and corresponding experimental measured results proved that 3-D fully coupled thermal-mechanical analysis and wear simulation analysis of self-lubricating spherical plain bearing with woven fabric liner could be done with the help of finite element software ABAQUS and secondary development of user subroutine FRIC and UMESHMOTION. So one more sophisticated simulation method for the structural optimization design and performance analysis of spherical plain bearing was presented in this article.(3)Contrast and analysis of woven fabric liner wear simulation results between pin-on-disc plane wear and spherical plain bearing wear would be a great help for exploring the relation model between woven liner pin-on-disc wear life and its spherical plain bearing wear life. It was clear that wear simulation results were greatly impacted by wear rate and temperature field. So it is critical to take full account of wear rate changes of friction material and spherical plain bearing temperature field changes for wear simulation of spherical plain bearings.