Investigations for vibration and friction torque behaviors of thrust ball bearing with self-driven textured guiding surface

Abstract

In order to improve the starved lubrication condition of rolling bearings, three kinds of textures, namely dimple, groove texture, and gradient groove texture, were developed on the guiding surface of thrust ball bearings in this study. The results show that gradient groove texture has the one-way self-driving function of liquid droplets. The root mean square (RMS) value of vibration acceleration of gradient groove textured bearing (GGB) decreased by 49.1% and the kurtosis decreased by 24.6% compared with non-textured bearing (NB) due to the directional spreading effect of gradient groove textures on oil.