ENGINEERING BABBITTED BEARINGS Instrumentation, Inspection, and Installation by John K. Whalen, P.E. Manager of Engineering TCE/Turbo Components & Engineering, Inc. Houston, TexasBABBITTED BEARINGS: Instrumentation, Inspection and Installation John K. Whalen, PE Manager of Engineering TCE/Turbo Components & Engineering, Inc. ABSTRACT There are many aspects of babbitted bearings which need to be understood for their proper specification, inspection, installation and trouble-shooting This paper will attempt to cover some of these areas for babbitted journal and thrust bearings INTRODUCTION This presentation will start with plain sleeve bearings and then progress through pressure dam bearings, other geometry sleeve bearings and tilting pad Journal bearings Next, thrust bearings will be covered including flat plat designs, taper land, tilting pad and fully equalized "Kingsbury" style bearings Topics covered will include critical areas to be aware of, design "rule of thumb’s", installation concerns and temperature instrumentation ideas We will also cover selected terminology to help communication when discussing these bearings JOURNAL BEARINGS Figure 1 is a drawing of a typical "2-axial groove" sleeve type journal bearing This is the simplest and most widely used journal bearing encountered today Note that this bearing is "split" in that is comprised of an upper and lower half At the splitine of this bearing we see axial grooves fed by oil supply holes or slots These grooves are designed to spread the cil supply over the length of the bearing They do not run the full length of the bearing so the oil does not "short circuit" out the ends Instead the groove terminates and bleed off grooves are used to ensure a flow of oil and to keep the groove free of accumulated dirt This style bearing is pressure fed with oil which enters the axial groove through the oil supply annulas All journa, bearing have certain dimensions that are critical ‘These include the OD and ID of the bearings The ID, or tore, of the bearing needs to be larger than the shaft diameter to have clearance Normal design clearance is 15 mils per inch of diameter For example a 4 inch journal bearing should have 6 mils of diametral (or total) clearance So that a 4000 shaft would have a bearing with a 4006 bore Tolerancing usually increases the clearance so a half mil tolerance on the shaft and 1 mil tolerance on the bearing bore would result in a clearance range of 6 to 75 mils diametral There are exceptions to this 15 mils per inch rule, the most notable include small bearings (under 3 inch), high speed bearings, heavily loaded bearings (such as in gearboxes and poster type compressors) and larger bearings (over 14" in diameter) The OD, or fit diameter, of the bearing is usually designed to be either the same size or 1 to 2 mils larger (on diameter) than the housing it is going into This is called "crush" and it is important that journal bearings have some crush for successfl operation Even spherical OD bearings should have crush because the spherical OD was designed to help align the bearing at installation and lock up once crushed If the wall of the bearing (bore to OD) is thin enough the crush will act to close up the bore of the bearing once installed This is why itis a good idea to verify the clearance of the bearing to the journal after installation in the machine Measuring the installed clearance and crush will be covered Inter A variation on the 2-axial groove bearing is the oil ring bearing as shown in figure 2 Here a ring, or two, rides on the shaft within the bearing The shaft rotation causes the ring to rotate through the oil bath picking up oil and depo: it on the journal to feed the axial distribution grooves In this case, since we are not pressure feeding the oil, the bleed off grooves are not used This helps ensure that all of the oil carried to the bearing by the oil ring is used to lubricate the bearing It is also common to use an elliptical bore bearing to help ensure adequate lubrication Elliptical bore bearings will be discussed in more detail later in this paper There are dozens of variations on the plain 2-axial groove bearing Most of these variations are attempts to address a vibration problem by timing the rotordynamics of the machine with optimized bearing designs It is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss these rotordynamics issues We will, however, cover a couple of the more popular designs Pressure dam bearing ‘After the oil ring and plain 2-axial groove bearings the pressure dam bearing (figure 3) is probably the next most common utilized sleeve bearing today With this style bearing a carefully (usually) designed "pocket" is machined into the upper half of the bearing as shown This pocket terminates rather abruptly (at the “dam") causing the oil dragged in to squeeze out (under "pressure”) forcing the shaft down in the bearing This style is usually used in high speed and/or low load (light rotor) applications to solve stability problems (oil whirl and/or oil or shaft “whip") With this type bearing it is important to verify the pocket depth (usually 10 to 20 mils deep) and to inspect the dam for an edge A. sharp edge is not absolutely needed but it is important that the pocket is not feathered ‘out and no bleed off grooves come off of it Some times a relief track is machined into the lower half of the bearing to further promote stability This track should run from one axial groove to the other Unlike the pressure dam pocket this track is used to break up the oil wedge formed between the journal and the bearing to further cause the shaft to ride lower in the bearing The depth of this pocket is not critical as long as it is over 1/32" deep