Abstract
Billions of rolling bearings (RB) are in use today in a broad and diverse range of applications. In the mobility sector, RB help to reduce friction losses and increase efficiency. In rail applications, the rail wheel rolling bearing is a critical component, which requires a strict maintenance schedule. In this literature review, grease lubrication in RB is reviewed and potential ways to improve the service life of greases in RB are discussed with special emphasis on the application as rail wheel bearing. Understanding the discussed fundamental lubrication processes is the key to increase the service life of the rail wheel bearings and might provide a basis for future work that aims to make maintenance of these bearings condition-based (condition-based maintenance). This review is primarily intended for R&D professionals from rail (and related) industry and others being interested in a rather brief, but fundamental, overview of this subject.
Highlights
As there exist vast amounts of highly interesting literature on all aspects of rolling bearing lubrication, this review does not claim to be complete by any means
After longer running times (240 h), the grease in the cage pockets is no longer homogeneous; it varies from grease that is similar to fresh grease to grease where mostly the base oil is heavily oxidized
For the long-term failure, which is of particular interest, it was found that in both cases severely oxidized base oil is found on the raceway and the cage pockets
Summary
As there exist vast amounts of highly interesting literature on all aspects of rolling bearing lubrication, this review does not claim to be complete by any means Instead, it tries to present a general picture citing papers that appear to be relevant for the intended application in rail wheel bearings. With rail wheels today having a longer usable lifetime than the grease in the rail wheel rolling bearings, this is a motivation to improve grease life and, ideally, to match it to the rail wheel life to reduce service costs (private communication with a major OEM of the rail industry.) Topics such as grease composition, ball bearing lubrication (lubrication in the contact, grease replenishment, etc.), which are directly linked to lubrication, will be discussed in the following
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