Failure Mechanism of Bearings under Extremely Cryogenic Conditions

Abstract

Bearing, as one of the most core components of rotating equipment, is prone to wear under cryogenic conditions, which seriously affects the efficiency of the whole system. Therefore, it is necessary to study the failure mechanism of bearing under cryogenic conditions. In this paper, friction and wear behavior of the bearings under cryogenic conditions is verified by using bearing simulation test platform. The results show that the bearing surface of raceway is prone to wear failure under cryogenic conditions, but the ball wear amount per unit time is small. This is because the cryogenic conditions seriously change the performance of the bearing material, the plasticity and strength of the material will be seriously reduced, and the brittleness will increase. Therefore, when the bearing ball and the bearing raceway surface contact friction, under the action of Hertz contact stress, the raceway surface is easy to produce pits and spalling, resulting in serious fatigue on the surface of the friction pair. The research provides a strongly theoretical and technical support for further improving the bearing performance and developing the tribological design of bearings.