No rotating machines can operate smoothly and effectively without a bearing. Automobiles use different types of bearings to have most of their moving parts slide or rotate easily. With bearings, heavy loads are easily managed at reduced frictional forces. You can find both ball bearings and roller bearings used majorly in automotive industry.
Some Popular Automobile Bearing Designs to Enhance Performance
Though there are no set parameters for the use of bearings in automobile parts, a few design variants in the automobile bearing cataloguego well with the applications for the improved and better performance they offer. Here are some of the prominent ones.
- Needle Thrust Roller Bearings: A distinctive characteristic of a needle thrust bearing is its needle rollers, with a smaller diameter and length over two or three times the size of the diameter. Hence, a general length and diameter ratio is somewhere between 3 and 10 and it helps reduce the frictional force acting on the rotating surface. Some of the places where a needle roller bearing is used are:
- Transmission system, where you can find a row of bearings in a round cylinder. They are carefully placed to control the shaft and minimize friction.
- Compressors, which undergo a lot of pressure during the operation. With the needle bearings, you can have the thrust distributed across the contact surface effectively.
- Rocker Arm Pivots, which enables the camshaft’s translation motion, as well as helps open and close the inlet and outlet valves. The function is eased by using a needle thrust bearing.
- Spherical Roller Thrust Bearing: This is another automotive bearing variant that is largely used in vehicles. You can find it used in gear boxes, electrical motors and other important moving parts.
- Tapered Roller Thrust Bearing: It is use in electrical motors, pumps wheels and more.
Make the Best Use of an Automobile Bearing Catalogue for Customized Versions
The increase in the number of vehicles every year has resulted in the developments in the automotive bearing designs, with several customized versions coming into being. The advanced bearings of today are good enough to support heavy loads at varying speeds, reduce friction and noise, provide endurance and enhance performance. Continuous research in the field has helped introduce some bearings that solve many problems during operation.
There are still more variants of this high-precision product; all you can do is to refer the automobile bearing catalogue for more details.