Novel Thermal Wear Simulation Approach to Model Transient Wear and Friction in Sliding Bearings

Wear occurs in sliding bearings as they often operate under mixed friction conditions in heavy-duty applications. Over the years, this has led to the development of wear simulations to predict wear evolution in sliding bearings. As part of wear evolution, bearing surface topography changes, and the bearing clearance varies due to temperature rise. For realistic wear predictions, both the surface topography changes and thermal effects must be considered. However, existing wear simulations do not accurately account for thermal effects during mixed friction. Effects such as local and transient temperature rise and thermal expansion alter bearing contact conditions (clearance) and thus influence wear evolution. Since these effects are not accurately modelled, realistic wear prediction in sliding bearings remains challenging with current approaches. Therefore, this paper introduces the extension of wear simulations by local and transient modelling of bearing temperature and clearance changes. The novelty lies in enabling the simultaneous consideration of transient thermal changes and surface topography changes during wear evolution. This enables a more realistic prediction of wear development in sliding bearings which can be applied to evaluate wear safety in bearing designs. The thermal wear simulation is validated using experimental measurement of friction torque, bearing temperature, and wear volume obtained from a radial sliding bearing test bench.