Investigations for vibration and friction torque behaviors of thrust ball bearing with self-driven textured guiding surface

In order to improve the starved lubrication condition of rolling bearings, three kinds of textures, namely dimple, groove texture, and gradient groove texture, were developed on the guiding surface of thrust ball bearings in this study. The results show that gradient groove texture has the one-way self-driving function of liquid droplets. The root mean square (RMS) value of vibration acceleration of gradient groove textured bearing (GGB) decreased by 49.1% and the kurtosis decreased by 24.6% compared with non-textured bearing (NB) due to the directional spreading effect of gradient groove textures on oil. The frequency domain analysis showed that the textures mainly suppressed the medium and high-frequency energy of bearing vibration, and the GGB was reduced the most with 65.3% and 48%, respectively. In addition, whether the grease is sufficiently sheared has a large impact on the oil guiding effect, and the friction torque of GGB could decrease by 10.5% compared with NB in the sufficiently sheared condition. Therefore, the gradient groove texture with oil self-driven effect on the guiding surface of rolling bearing can effectively improve the lubrication condition of the bearing and thus reduce the bearing vibration and friction torque, which has a promising application prospect.