Heat Transfer Analysis of Slewing Ring Bearing for High Thermal Applications

The challenge in design and manufacturing tasks includes precise measurement of static friction, stiffness, deformation, raceway relative approach, and heat distribution of slewing ring bearings. These parameters affect the life and performance of the rolling elements bearing at elevated thermal environments. Toward that, sections of a complete bearing called linear model mock-up bearing (LMMB) have been designed and fabricated for the study of heat distribution. The physical significance of the heat distribution on bearing elements was studied using square-guarded hot-plate (SGHP) apparatus. The thermal contact conductance (TCC) experiments were carried out by varying surface roughnesses and interface temperatures under different loading conditions by using the combinations of steel plates and LMMB under dry and lubricated conditions. From this study, it is observed that the TCC values obtained from LMMB were significantly high across the contact surfaces of AISI 42100–AISI 52100–AISI 4140 steel plate's combination. Further, the finite element method (FEM) simulation has been carried out successfully to evaluate the temperature distribution in combination of bearing steel plates and LMMB by solidworks software, and the results are discussed.