Study on the Effect of Starved Lubrication on the Dynamic Characteristics of Locally Failed Roller Bearings

Abstract

When the lubricant is not enough to maintain the ideal lubrication state of the bearing, the deep groove ball bearing will enter the starved lubrication state, which leads to the change of the vibration response of the deep groove ball bearing with localized defects. Previous bearing dynamics models mainly consider the lubrication state as an ideal lubrication condition, which may not reveal the effect of starved lubrication on the vibration characteristics of defective bearings. In this paper, the internal interaction of the system under starved condition is taken into account, and a dynamic model of defective deep groove ball bearings with insufficient lubricant is established to investigate the effects of different starved lubrication degrees on the contact force, friction force, cage speed, and system vibration characteristics. The results show that the lubricant insufficiency significantly changes the contact force inside the bearing, and the increase in friction caused by the increase in the degree of starved lubrication leads to the suppression of the degree of bearing slipping. The root mean square (RMS) value of the time-domain signal and the outer ring fault frequency both increase with the increase of the starved degree. The results of the study are helpful for fault diagnosis and condition monitoring of related equipment.