Load-Independent Power Losses of Fully Flooded Lubricated Tapered Roller Bearings: Numerical and Experimental Investigation of the Effect of Operating Temperature and Housing Wall Distances

Abstract

To improve roller bearing efficiency, it is essential to identify the sources of power losses and quantify them in the design stage, considering different influencing factors. For oil-lubricated bearings, load-independent power losses ($P_{L{B}_0}$) can be the dominant source of dissipation, especially for high-speed and abundant lubrication. In the present work, $P_{L{B}_0}$ of a 32208 tapered roller bearing were measured experimentally under various operating conditions; that is, different rotational speeds, temperatures, and geometries of the oil reservoir. A numerical tool, based on computational fluid dynamics, to estimate $P_{L{B}_0}$ and provide useful insights to investigate their causes has been developed in the OpenFOAM® environment. Numerical and experimental results show excellent agreement in most of the operating conditions investigated. Oil flows, $P_{L{B}_0}$ contributions of different bearing components, and computational effort are discussed in the article.

Keywords:

• Tapered roller bearing
• lubrication
• hydraulic power losses
• OpenFOAM^®
• CFD
• experimental validation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the German Research Foundation (DFG) for its support in the context of the experimental work within the framework of the project” Einfluss der Hydraulischen Verluste auf die Reibung von Wälzlagern” (SCHW 826/12-1 und SA 898/23-1).