Contact and tribological properties of self-lubricating ellipsoidal plain bearings

A new type bearing named self-lubricating ellipsoidal plain bearing was proposed and successfully prepared by cold extrusion forming technology. Through finite element method and experiment, the dynamic distributions of the contact stress, wear depth and the worn morphology of the fabric liner were investigated. Results show that the contact and wear performances can be improved by reasonable design of bearing flatness. When the radial load is 1000 N, the contact stress distribution of the bearing with flatness of 0.005 is the most uniform. Compared with traditional spherical plain bearings, the maximum contact stress is decreased from 32.407 MPa to 26.880 MPa, and the maximum wear depth is decreased from 0.0754 mm to 0.0688 mm after 25000 swings.