Journal bearing housing design—A statistical study with FEM

Abstract

When designing journal bearing housings for construction equipment, one goal is to get an even pressure distribution over the length of the bushing. This is to avoid excessive wear due to contact pressure peaks. A housing that is considered good, does not allow the pin to deflect and keeps the stresses low in the weld. To do this it must be stiff and this will lead to high contact pressures on the edges of the bushing, which is not preferable since wear is highly dependent on the contact pressure level. If the distribution of the contact pressure could be smoothed out over the bushing, the material might be used more efficiently. The normal way to do this is to crown the bushing to allow for pin deflection. However this leads to reduced area in contact. Another method to avoid high pressures in the bearing is to optimize the bearing housing for optimum stiffness. This paper describes one way to optimize journal bearing housings in regard to the contact pressure in the tribo-contact. A statistical approach was applied to a parameterized finite element model with contact elements. Three parameters were analyzed at different loads; set ring thickness, set ring width and fillet weld size. The contact pressure distributions were evaluated in two different ways to a single value to meet the statistical demand of measurable result. The results show that the set ring thickness and width are the parameters that influence most the contact pressure distribution. To reduce the maximum contact pressure the set ring thickness should be kept small.