가속시험법을 활용한 자동차용 워터펌프 베어링의 수명특성에 관한 연구

Abstract

A water-pump located in the cooling area of a car circulates cooling water. A particular bearing element, known as a water-pump bearing, installed in the rotating part carries the entire load. The failure of this water-pump bearing has a direct impact on the failure of the automobile engine, and so securing its reliability is crucial. Several researchers have examined the design principles of the water-pump bearing, but there are no reports on the life characteristic of the bearing yet. Herein, we report the construction of test equipment to reproduce the spalling of the roller contact, which is the main failure mode of the chosen water-pump bearing. We chose the radial load as an accelerated stress factor and validated the failure mode by monitoring the surface defects. We conducted the accelerated life test after determining the accelerated stress level through a combination of finite element analysis and a preliminary test. In the life tests, we used an accelerometer to perform failure diagnosis. In the last stage of this study, we present a statistical reliability analysis. Thus, we fully estimated the shape parameter of the water-pump bearing, accelerating level on the load , and the lifetime (MTTF and B₁₀ life) under real use conditions, and finally proposed an interval estimation value considering the uncertainty of the estimated value.