Increase Rolling Bearing Life By 250%

"Many million rolling bearings are used worldwide every year - almost always when something is supposed to turn somewhere," says Dipl.-Ing. Oliver Maiß the dimension of his research results. "If the life of a bearing is now two and a half times longer than before, you can save about 77 t of steel per million bearings used." Approximately the same amount of CO ₂ would be generated less. Maiß is a research assistant at the Institute for Manufacturing Technology and Machine Tools (IFW) at the Production Technology Center of Leibniz Universität Hannover, and the goal of his project is to manufacture rolling bearings in such a way that they use as few resources as possible in their manufacture and use.

New manufacturing process developed

The lifespan increase is therefore not everything: it goes hand in hand with a second improvement. The new manufacturing process that Maiß has optimized for the production of these rolling bearings offers a second resource advantage. The areas of the bearing rings relevant to friction are not ground and honed at Maiß. Rather, it achieves the special, life-enhancing surface quality through the so-called hard turning, in which the turned surfaces are rolled in the same way in a combined process. “Rolling compresses the structure to such an extent that high residual compressive stresses occur that increase the service life. At the same time, the surface topography can also be adjusted well.”In other words:Despite a significantly higher feed rate, the surface roughness and thus the rolling resistance can be reduced. "If the productivity increase is 300%, the surface quality is still 20% better than hard turning without rolling," says Maiß.

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Research project "Resource-efficient construction elements"

The research project, which is being carried out jointly by the Institute for Manufacturing Technology and Machine Tools and the Institute for Machine Construction and Tribology (IMKT), is part of a larger project, the priority program "Resource-efficient construction elements", which is funded by the German Research Foundation and will run until the end of 2017. At the IMKT, Professor Gerhard Poll and his staff calculate their surface requirements with their own service life model, design the rolling bearings and finally define the manufacturing requirements for the IFW.

Application partners from industry wanted

The first transfer projects with industrial partners are already planned. Prof. Dr.-Ing. Berend Denkena, director of the IFW, welcomes the results and also the quick transfer to the companies: “Especially if we can help with our research to save real and relevant resources, it is very important to us that the results are implemented quickly to see. Further research and application partners from industry are therefore very welcome.”(Sh)

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