Sliding bearings in heavy duty engines : A bearing wear comparative study

Abstract: Start-stop systems are widely used in the car industry today but have not yet been fully implemented in the heavy-duty vehicle industry. The greater loads arising in the engines leads to excessive wear of the hydrodynamic bearings during starts and stops which has a distinct impact on the machine´s lifetime performance and reliability. This master thesis involves a comparative study of how different surface topographies of a shaft affects hydrodynamic bearing wear during start and stop conditions. The objective was to see if one can extend the bearing lifetime by doing minor changes to the shaft surface. This has been done by redesigning an existing start-stop test rig, increasing its operating system oil temperature to 90°C to provide a more accurate description of the bearing environment, to be able to conduct a series of start-stop cycling experiments. Upon examination of the experiment results, it becomes clear that a more polished surface of the shaft does reduce bearing wear significantly during starts and stops. It was also noticed that a more polished shaft surface does reach full-film lubrication at a lower rotational speed of the shaft, separating the shaft and the bearing surfaces.