Design of the levers at the development of new self-equalizing thrust bearings

Abstract

Plain bearings are undoubtedly one of the main parts of the power machines (such as a turbine or compressor). However, there are many cases when in large power equipment is occurring asymmetrically loading on bearings due to thermal deformations, production inaccuracies, or simple deflection of the shaft. Presented research deals with the numerical analysis of levers being as the first step at the design of a new self-equalizing thrust bearing with the goal to find out its behaviour and base on that to make the improvements. The numerical analysis was done for the bearing with 12 segments using the software ANSYS. The boundary conditions were applied so to prevent the movement (collapse) of the system and at the same time use them to influence the stress distribution in the levers as little as possible. The steel 34CrNiMo6 has been used for the levers in a refined state. The achieved results confirmed the design of the levers, its sufficient stiffness, good functionality, and reliability. (C) 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0) Peer-review under responsibility of ICSID 2020 Organizers.