Experimental Investigation of Friction Effect on Liner Model Rolling Bearings for Large Diameter Thrust Bearing Design

Studying friction coefficient has significant importance, especially when dealing with high load and temperature applications that have frequent starting and stopping points. Towards that, two sets of angular contact Linear Model Mockup Bearings (LMMB) were designed and fabricated. This linear model assembly was made up of high precision, grounded raceways (AISI 4140) and commercially purchased balls (AISI 52100). The experimental studies were carried out by placing different number of balls between the raceways under different loads at dry lubricating condition. The static friction coefficients were measured using two different experiments: viz gravitation-based experiment and direct linear force measurement experiment. And Digital Image Correlation (DIC) technique was used to find the stiffness of LMMB set.