Design of an Aircraft Rolling Bearings Platform and its Thermal Performance Evaluation

The thermal instability is one crucial factor leading to low bearing operation performance. This paper presents a novel experiment device for thermal performance investigation of an aircraft rolling bearings. A bidirectional fixing structure was designed to balance the spindle thermal deformation. The hydraulic loading was used and the oil injection manner was adopted in the new device. Experimental test was conducted using the new device and experimental results were compared with the calculation based on the temperature and thermal nodes theory. The comparison demonstrates that the temperature distribution trends between the theoretical and experimental results remained the same; specifically, the error between the theoretical and experimental results was 1.0 % under the condition of 200 kg load and 2250 rpm driving speed. Consequently, the analysis result shows that the new device is feasible and reliable to provide precise thermal characteristics for the aircraft rolling bearings.