The first part of the thesis describes journal bearings characteristics, their function and lubrication. The second part of the thesis is about a rotor-dynamics issue and how to use numerical and experimental methods for verification of a new bearing design. The practical part of the thesis is focused on analyse a current design of bearings in MBS. In the last part has been made and verified a new bearing design.

Plans to shut down nuclear power plants in some European countries as well as increased electricity production by wind and solar power will increase the work load on hydroelectric power plants in the future. Also, due to the power grid regulations, hydroelectric power plants undergo more frequent start-ups and shut-downs. During such transient periods, a large amplitude shaft motion can occur, especially in the power plants with vertical shafts. Large shaft motion is not desirable because it can lead to a machine failure. Furthermore, performance limitations of conventional white metal or babbitted bearings call for the development of new bearing designs. An outstanding tribological performance can be achieved by introducing compliant polymer liners. At the same time, bearings with compliant liners may alter rotor-bearing system dynamic behaviour compared to the systems with conventional white metal bearings. The research approach of this thesis is to employ nonlinear analysis to provide further understanding of the compliant bearing dynamic response to synchronous shaft excitation. Plain cylindrical journal bearings with different compliant liner thicknesses were analysed using a nonlinear approach. The numerical model was verified with an in-house developed code at steady state conditions. Results obtained by the numerical models showed good agreement. After verification of the numerical model for fixed geometry journal bearings, models for tilting pad journal bearings were developed. Results for the tilting pad journal bearing with three pads with line pivot geometry were compared with published data in dynamic conditions. A good agreement was obtained between the two numerical models. The effect of pad pivot geometry on bearing dynamic response was investigated. Vertical and horizontal shaft configurations were compared in terms of the effect of preload factor, pivot offset, tapers and pad inclination angles. Influence of the viscoelastic properties of compliant liners was also studied. All these factors significantly affect bearing dynamic response. It is shown how these factors should be selected to control the journal orbit sizes. It was also shown that the compliant liner provides lower maximum oil film pressure and thicker minimum oil film thickness in the bearing mid-plane in both static and dynamic operating conditions. / <p>QC 20120319</p> / Swedish Hydropower Centre

Volvo Cars is in a change of producing only electric and hybrid cars by 2025.Subcomponent testing is a crucial part to ensure the quality of the individual buildingblocks in an electric machine. Any way of making these tests more reliable and less timeconsuming is of great interest at Volvo. Force and temperature on bearings are especiallyhard to measure accurately, because of their placement and dynamic behavior. Accurateand reliable measurements is also a vital part in creating realistic Computer-AidedEngineering (CAE) models for simulation purposes. Simulations on bearings could lead tobetter bearing choices and accelerate the design process. This could increase bearing lifeand increase the Electrical Vehicle (EV) range due to minimized friction losses. FiberBragg Grating (FBG) sensors is a technology that has some key advantages overconventional sensors. They are immune to EMI, smaller in size, can have multiple sensorsin one fiber and can measure multiple physical quantities at the same time. Volvo Cars isinterested in investigating whether this sensor technology could be a candidate forreplacing some of the current measurement setup configurations.The project was divided into three parts, validating sensor equipment, find method forinstallation and measurement on a bearing and development of a CAE model for bearinglosses and heat transfer. To validate the sensor equipment a Measurement SystemAnalysis (MSA) was performed on two FBG fibers, one FBG isolated from strain fortemperature measurement and one FBG array with multiple sensing points. From theMSA it could be seen that the FBG temperature sensor had a total uncertainty of 3.4 °CThe FBG array had a strain uncertainty of 1.04 μ𝜀 and a temperature uncertainty of 0.4 °C.The uncertainty of both the FBG array and the FBG temperature sensor is highlydependent on the calibration of the sensitivity constant. The force measurement on thebearing was done with a concept based on the wavelength difference, produced by strain,between two FBG sensors. The concept was tested in a dynamic component rig where anaxial force could be applied, and the wavelength difference measured. The temperatureon the outer ring of the bearing was measured using an FBG isolated from strain. The testresults were promising, but since the FBG is sensitive to temperature and strain theincreased temperature difference between the two fibers affected the results. Thecalibration method needs to be compensated for the increased temperature differencebetween the fibers which is generated when the rotational speed is increased, and thiscould not be done with a single temperature measurement. The two developed CAEmodels was both constructed in MATLAB and showed similar behavior with experimentaltests done by others. To validate the models, physical test for heat transfer and bearinglosses should be performed.

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Angles-only navigation is simple, robust, and well proven in many applications. However, it is sometimes ill-conditioned for orbital rendezvous and proximity operations because, without a direct range measurement, the distance to approaching satellites must be estimated by firing thrusters and observing the change in the target's bearing. Nevertheless, the simplicity of angles-only navigation gives it great appeal. The viability of this technique for relative navigation is examined by building a high-fidelity simulation and evaluating the sensitivity of the system to sensor errors. The relative performances of square-root filtering methods, including Potter, Carlson, and UD factorization filters, are compared to the conventional and Joseph formulations. Filter performance is evaluated during closed-loop "station keeping" operations in simulation.

Symbolic dynamics is a current interest in the area of anomaly detection, especially in mechanical systems.  Symbolic dynamics reduces the overall dimensionality of system responses while maintaining a high level of robustness to noise.  Rolling element bearings are particularly common mechanical components where anomaly detection is of high importance.  Harsh operating conditions and manufacturing imperfections increase vibration innately reducing component life and increasing downtime and costly repairs.  This thesis presents a novel way to detect bearing vibrational anomalies through Symbolic Aggregate Approximation (SAX) in the two-dimensional time-frequency domain.  SAX reduces computational requirements by partitioning high-dimensional sensor data into discrete states.  This analysis specifically suits bearing vibration data in the time-frequency domain, as the distribution of data does not greatly change between normal and faulty conditions. Under ground truth synthetically-generated experiments, two-dimensional SAX in conjunction with Markov model feature extraction is successful in detecting anomalies (> 99%) using short time spans (< 0.1 seconds) of data in the time-frequency domain with low false alarms (< 8%).  Analysis of real-world datasets validates the performance over the commonly used one-dimensional symbolic analysis by detecting 100% of experimental anomalous vibration with 0 false alarms in all fault types using less than 1 second of data for the basis of 'normality'. Two-dimensional SAX also demonstrates the ability to detect anomalies in predicative monitoring environments earlier than previous methods, even in low Signal-to-Noise ratios. / Master of Science

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The main purpose of this thesis work was to halve the cycle time of a grinding process of the groove of carbonitrided ball bearings rings. The study was conducted as a Six Sigma project at SKF in Bari, Italy. Reaching the goal was important for the company as it meant avoiding the purchase of another grinding machine. The groove grinding process on carbonitrided rings features double the cycle time than the same process on through hardened rings and halving it was required to fulfill the volumes demanded. The Six Sigma methodology was applied through the implementation of DMAIC. The analysis of the problems and identification of areas for improvement were carried out deploying different tools such as an Ishikawa diagram, Hypothesis Testing and Statistical Process Control. The outcome of this was the need to optimize the carbonitriding process minimizing the depth of the layer without enlarged carbides in order to render the design of the part easier to machine and subsequently find the process parameters for the groove grinding yielding a cycle time of six seconds. Many trials were conducted with the supplier of carbonitriding, until the carbon and ammonia potentials were set at levels resulting in a depth of the layer allowing the change of the design. An optimizing DOE was instead performed for the grinding process which highlighted the parameters settings yielding the target cycle time. Finally actions and controls to perform in order to maintain the gains were defined.

<p> A user-oriented computer program for an optimum solution of the hydrodynamic journal bearings is developed. The computer package is formulated in such a way to determine the optimum solution using only any of the following optimization techniques adapted from OPTISEP: DAVID, SIMPLEX, SEEK1, AND SEEK3. </p> <p> A user guide and a complete documentations for the computer package are included in the thesis. </p> / Thesis / Master of Engineering (ME)