Field Application Note

Journal Bearings
Industrial machinery with high horsepower and high loads, such as steam turbines, centrifugal compressors, pumps and motors, utilize journal bearings as rotor supports. Plain Bearing The plain bearing is the simplest and most common design with a high load carrying capacity and the lowest cost. This bearing is a simple cylinder with a clearance of about 12 mils per inch of journal diameter. Due to its cylindrical configuration it One of the basic purposes of a is the most susceptible to oil whirl. It bearing is to provide a frictionless environment to support and guide a is a fairly common practice during rotating shaft. Properly installed and installation to provide a slight amount of "crush" to force the maintained, journal bearings have bearing into a slightly elliptical essentially infinite life. configuration. BEARING DESIGN Lemon Bore The lemon or A journal elliptical bore bearing, bearing is a simply stated, variation on the is a cylinder plain bearing which where the surrounds the bearing shaft and is clearance is filled with some form of fluid lubricant. In this reduced on one direction. During manufacture this bearing has shims bearing a fluid is the medium that supports the shaft preventing metal installed at the split line and then to metal contact. The most common bored cylindrical. When the shims fluid used is oil, with special are removed the lemon bore pattern is results. For horizontally split applications using water or a gas. This application note will bearings, this design creates an concentrate on oil lubricated journal increased vertical pre-load onto the bearings. shaft. Hydrodynamic principles, which are active as the shaft rotates, This bearing has a lower load carrying capacity that plain bearings, but are still susceptible to oil whirl at high speeds. Manufacturing and installation costs are considered low.

create an oil wedge that supports the shaft and relocates it within the bearing clearances. In a horizontally split bearing the oil wedge will lift and support the shaft, relocating the centerline slightly up and to one side into a normal attitude position in a lower quadrant of the bearing. The normal attitude angle will depend upon the shaft rotation direction with a clockwise rotation having an attitude angle in the lower left quadrant. External influences, such as hydraulic volute pressures in pumps or generator electrical load can produce additional relocating forces on the shaft attitude angle and centerline position. An additional characteristic of journal bearings is damping. This type of bearing provides much more damping than a rolling element bearing because of the lubricant present. More viscous and thicker lubricant films provide higher damping properties. As the available damping increases, the bearing stability also increases. A stable bearing design holds the rotor at a fixed attitude angle during transient periods such as machine startups/shutdowns or load changes. The damping properties of the lubricant also provides an excellent medium for limiting vibration transmission. Thus, a vibration measurement taken at the bearing outer shell will not represent the actual vibration experienced by the rotor within its bearing clearances.

Pressure Dam A pressure dam bearing is basically a plain bearing which has been modified to incorporate a central relief groove or scallop along the top half of the bearing shell ending abruptly at a step. As the lubricant is carried around the bearing it encounters the step that causes an increased pressure at the top of the journal inducing a stabilizing force onto the journal which forces the shaft into the bottom half of the bearing. This bearing has a high load capacity and is a common correction for machine designs susceptible to oil whirl. Pressure dam bearings are a unidirectional configuration. Another unidirectional bearing configuration is the offset bearing. It is similar to a plain bearing, but the upper half has been shifted horizontally. Offset bearings have increasing load capacities as the offset is increased.

Tilting Pad Tilting pad bearings is a partial arc design. This configuration has individual bearing pads which are Journal bearings have many differing allowed to pivot or tilt to conform designs to compensate for differing with the dynamic loads from the load requirements, machine speeds, lubricant and shaft. This type of cost, or dynamic properties. One bearing is a unidirectional design and

unique disadvantage which consumes much research and experimentation is an instability which manifests itself as oil whirl and oil whip. Left uncorrected, this phenomenon is catastrophic and can destroy the bearing and rotor very quickly. Oil whip is so disastrous because the rotor cannot form a stable oil wedge consequently allowing metal to metal contact between the rotor and the bearing surface. Once surface contact exists the rotor begins to precess, in a reverse direction from rotor rotation direction, using the entire bearing clearance. This condition leads to high friction levels which will overheat the bearing babbit metal that leads to rapid destruction of the bearing, rotor journal, and the machine seals.

is available in several variations incorporating differing numbers of pads with the generated load applied on a pad or between the pads. VIBRATION MONITORING A shaft supported by journal bearings will move relative to the bearing housing as various forces are imposed onto the shaft. A vibration transducer is required which can monitor the relative motion between the shaft and the bearing. Higher vibration frequencies are not of prime concern since they would not be transmitted through the oil film reliably.

The only sensor available that can measure relative measurements of the shaft is the non-contacting pickup, sometimes called a Some common designs employed are displacement, eddy current, or lemon bore, pressure dam, and tilt proximity pickup. This type of pad bearings. These designs were sensor measures the relative developed to interrupt and redirect vibration of the shaft and, also, the the oil flow path within the bearing relative position of the shaft with to provide higher bearing stabilities. respect to the bearing clearances. High frequencies such as blade passage and cavitation would be GEOMETRIES attenuated by the lubricant. Case Journal bearings installed in mounted sensors would not provide industrial machinery today generally an accurate indication of the fall into two categories: full bearings vibration due to the inherent and partial arc bearings. Full damping offered by the lubricant bearings completely surround the between the shaft and the bearing. shaft journal with many differing For more information about geometries such as elliptical, lobed, installation and theory of operation or pressure dam configurations and of NCPUs, see the STI Application usually are two pieces, mated at a Notes: Eddy Current Transducer split line. Partial arc bearings have Installation, Part 1-Radial Vibration. several individual load bearing surfaces or pads and are made up of numerous adjustable components.

The bearing inner surface is covered with a softer material, commonly called babbit. Babbit, which is a tin or lead based alloy, has a thickness that can vary from 1 to 100 mils depending upon the bearing diameter. A babbit lining provides a surface which will not mar or gouge the shaft if contact is made and to allow particles in the lubricant to be imbedded in the liner without damaging the shaft.