ISSN 1068-3666, Journal of Friction and Wear, 2007, Vol. 28, No. 6, pp. 541–545. © Allerton Press, Inc., 2007.Original Russian Text © A.V. Anisimov, V.E. Bakhareva, G.I. Nikolaev, 2007, published in Trenie i Iznos, 2007, Vol. 28, No. 6, pp. 615–620.

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INTRODUCTION

Reliability, safety, cost-effectiveness, life of mecha-nisms and devices, level of vibration and structuralnoise, environmental safety, and competitiveness of theequipment on the world market are mainly governed bythe operating characteristics of numerous friction units.Recently, great attention has been paid to the ecologicalsafety of friction units of ships, hydraulic turbines, andpumps. The problem can be solved, in particular, byexcluding oil lubrication in friction units and usingpolymer antifriction materials capable of operatingunder water lubrication instead of metallic ones [1, 2].

The solution of the problem is complicated by thefact that there is a group of responsible large-scale slid-ing bearings in ship and energy machine building (bear-ings of propeller shafts and rudder pins of ships, shaftsand guides of hydraulic turbine apparatuses, and uniquepump aggregates) operating under high contact pres-sures. They need absolute smooth stability of operationin water over the course of 25 years or during the wholelife cycle of ship equipment [3].

Traditional antifriction polymer materials rankbelow metallic alloys 4–50 times in strength and 3–10 times in wear resistance. Almost all of them swell inwater and have a coefficient of thermal expansion 10–100 times as high as that of metals and therefore theyare inapplicable for making precise bearings [4, 5].

The main objective of the work implemented in thePrometei Research Institute is the creation of a newclass of ecologically safe antifriction polymer compos-ite materials characterized by high structural strength,wear and impact resistance, engineering efficiency, anddimension stability at the level of metallic alloys, whileat the same time, unlike metals, capable of operatingunder water lubrication. Carbon plastics are intendedfor production of heavy-duty and high-speed bearingsfor ships, hydraulic turbines, and pumps.

APPLICATION OF UGET EPOXY CARBON PLASTIC

UGET carbon plastic based on chloronitrogen-con-taining polyfunctional epoxy resin and tissue of low-module carbon fiber was developed as early as in 1978–1980 [6]. Bearings made of UGET carbon plastic aresuccessfully used with shafts made of bronze and steelsof different hardness and structure including corrosion-resistant steel 08Kh18N10T (hardness up to 20 HRC).With titanium alloy shafts, nickel-modified UGET-TNcarbon plastic is used [2]. Shipbuilding and hydraulicturbine building have accumulated much experiencewith the use of sliding bearings made of UGET carbonplastic.

Friction Units of Ship Mechanisms and Systems.

These include friction units of a driving rudder set ofships of different types and design (supports for ruddersand rudder machines) with regard to stabilizers, inter-ceptors, drives for actuators of kingston valve type, andscupper screens, as well as mast-elevating extendingdevices and mechanisms.

Heavy-duty friction units of ship mechanisms aresubjected to high contact pressures up to 60 MPa andimpact loading. The sliding velocity is, as a rule, low(<0.1 m/s), which has a negative effect on the forma-tion of the lubricating layer.

Sliding bearings have been previously made ofbronze, and shafts have been made of a corrosion-resis-tant material having rather low antifriction characteris-tics, viz. corrosion-resistant steel or titanium alloys.Therefore, in the absence of a reliable oil lubricationsystem there is a danger of seizure of metallic bearings,which may result in the failure of the whole mecha-nism. Supply of a lubricant to the mated surfaces pro-vides efficiency and the required resource of bearingsmade of bronze. The lubricant pipelines consisting ofcopper tubes extend up to 5–8 m in some ships. Lubri-cation restricts the life and reliability of mechanismsoperating in seawater and makes the environment pol-

Antifriction Carbon Plastics in Machine Building

A. V. Anisimov, V. E. Bakhareva, and G. I. Nikolaev

Prometei Central Research Institute, ul. Shpalernaya 49, St. Petersburg, 193015 Russia

Received July 19, 2007

Abstract

—A new class of antifriction polymer composite materials, i.e. carbon plastics, is considered in termsof their application in machine building. They exceed traditional antifriction polymer materials in their charac-teristics. The use of sliding bearings made of carbon plastics in ship and energy machine building has showntheir high efficiency.

DOI:

10.3103/S1068366607060098

Key words:

antifriction carbon plastic, sliding bearing, pressure, epoxy resin, phenol-formaldehyde resin.

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luted. Instead of bronze bearings operating with oillubricant, bearings made of UGET and UGET-TNepoxy carbon plastics have been recommended forover-board friction units.

Large-scale bearings >600 mm in diameter and>100 kg in mass have been designed and producedsince 2001. They are intended for large-displacementships.

From 1995 till 1997 bearings made of UGET carbonplastic were installed in the rudder head shafts of fivetimber ships. Their features are that they operate bothunder lubrication and dry conditions (the upper bearingof the rudder head ship). In 1999 the condition and gapsin the bearings was assessed at docking. During the per-formance period the bush dimensions remainedunchanged and the signs of damage were absent on thefriction surface of the rudder head shafts made of cor-rosion-resistant steel. The bearings were used further.

Beginning from 1999, MTD Marine TechnologyDevelopment, Ltd. (GB) has used UGET carbon plasticin rudders and stabilizers on high-speed passengerships Jumbo Cat (Fjellstrand shipyard, Norway), West-Foil 25(Pacific Marine shipyard, USA), SuperFoil 40(Almaz Sea Factory shipyard, Russia), and automobilepassenger ferries. Ships and ferries operate in differentclimates, i.e. the Hawaian islands, the English Channel,England–France, Finland–Estonia, and China.

Friction Units of Hydraulic Turbines.

For a longtime these have been equipped with bronze bearingswith an oil lubricant. Ecologists are very familiar withejections of the oil from hydraulic turbines when hun-dreds liters of it appear in water. Presently Russianenterprises are starting to produce ecologically safe tur-bines with friction units under oil lubrication. Hydrau-lic turbine building is an export-oriented and high-profit industry. Foreign customers do not buy hydraulicturbines with oil-lubricated hydraulic turbines. There-fore, the replacement of oil lubrication with water

makes Russian hydraulic turbines competitive on theworld market. The whole set of large-scale sliding bear-ings and seals are available in hydraulic turbines(Fig. 1).

UGET carbon plastic is used for making:(1) slow-moving heavy-duty sliding bearings for

blades trunnions of the guiding device that operate inwater under pressures up to 25 MPa and at slidingvelocities from 0.004 to 0.1 m/s;

(2) slow-moving heavy-duty sliding bearings for theturning mechanism of the blades of the guiding device(servomotor bushes, lever bushes, bars of control ring,etc.) that operate in air under contact pressures up to25 MPa and at sliding velocities from 0.004 to 0.1 m/s.

The sliding bearings of hydraulic turbine guidingdevices are successfully used in a number of hydroelec-tric power plants both in Russia and abroad.

Friction Units in Basic Engineering Industry.

Suc-cessful experience of operation of heavy-duty slow-moving sliding bearings made of UGET carbon plasticin shipbuilding and hydraulic turbine building hasallowed for their use in various mechanisms of hoistingapparatuses (winches, cranes, walking excavators,dredges, etc.)

UGET carbon plastics have been used in frictionunits of mining equipment (crushers grade KID pro-duced by the Mekhanobr OAO). Crusher friction unitsoperate in extremely severe conditions under impactand vibration loads of abrasive particles. Previouslybabbite with oil lubricant was used in these units; how-ever, it was pitted. The service life of babbite bearingswas 2–3 months. Bearings made of antifriction carbonplastic have a resource of about a year. UGET carbonplastics were also used in friction units of dredges andwalking excavators at gold-mining plants in theMagadan region (Russia).

Friction Units of Pipeline Equipment.

Bearings forpipeline equipment, disk seals in particular, are a prom-ising field for the application of UGET carbon plasticsand UGET-TN nickel-modified carbon plastic (operat-ing in pair with shafts made of titanium alloys) (Fig. 2).They have to meet heavy demands on strength, dimen-sion stability, and wear resistance. Previously the car-bon–carbon material

uglecon

has been used in the fric-tion units of these mechanisms. It possesses high wearresistance and dimension stability, yet it is brittle andtechnologically inefficient. In addition, carbon–carbonmaterials exceed by an order of magnitude the carbonplastics in cost. Carbon plastic has been successfullyused for disk seals of pipelines from 100 to 1000 mm indiameter when installed in water supply facilities inSt. Petersburg. UGET carbon sliding bearings are usedfor pipeline disk seals from 100 to 1200 mm in diame-ter.

Friction Units of Contact Power Networks of Rail-roads.

Metallic bearings are commonly used in frictionunits of tackle block compensators of contact powernetworks. They corrode in atmosphere and have a con-

Shaft bearing

Shaft face seal Servo-motor

Bearings

Bearings of blade

Bearing of

trunnions

the working wheel

bearings

of kinematics

Fig. 1.

Sliding friction units of a hydraulic turbine.

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ANTIFRICTION CARBON PLASTICS IN MACHINE BUILDING 543

siderably smaller service life than needed (~50 years).They operate under a contact pressure of up to 50 MPa,sliding velocity of 0.005 m/s, and periodically withoutlubrication for a short period of time. The coefficient offriction cannot be higher than 0.15 and the wear0.15 mm for 50 years (at a bearing diameter of35.7 mm). UGET carbon plastic bearings were recom-mended for use instead of metallic ones, and a pilotbatch of bearings was manufactured.

Energomontazh BSK ZAO has tested the bearingson a special rig of the Research Institute for TransportBuilding in the test center of structures and units ofelectric supplies devices of railroad transport. 20 thou-sand cycles (24-hour operation per a cycle) were car-ried out, which corresponded to a 50-year operation.The test results show the wear of the composite bearingto be 0.1 mm and the coefficient of friction (0.15) toremain unchanged in the course of the tests. Based onthe positive test results it was decided to use the UGETcarbon plastic bearings in this unit. More than 3000sliding bearings are presently in service.

APPLICATION OF FUT PHENOL PLASTICFUT carbon plastic based on resole phenol-formal-

dehyde resin and low-module carbon fiber fabric wasdeveloped in Prometei Central Research Institute in1985–1987. FUT carbon plastic bearings are used suc-cessfully in pair with shafts made of bronze and high-hardness steels (>35 HRC). Carbon plastics modifiedby fluoroplastic at the macro- and nanolevels as well asmetallic powders (nickel, copper, and babbites) at themesolevel are used with corrosion-resistant steels andtitanium alloys having low tribological characteristics.Most experience in using sliding bearings made of FUTcarbon plastic has been accumulated in shipbuilding,hydraulic turbine building and pump building.

Journal Bearings of Ship Propeller Shafts.

Journalbearings of propeller shafts made of traditional materi-

als (babbites, guaiacum, rubber, polyamide, and tex-tolyte) are considered to be the least reliable units ofmodern ships. They are characterized by an excessivenumber of failures due to the wear of propeller shaftsand bearings. Binary supports made of FUT carbonplastic and graphite-filled fluoroplastic were developedfor the units [3, 7]. Depending on the shaft diameter, thebinary supports of two kinds are used, i.e. unitized andcomposing. The composing construction is a set of sub-sequently placed bushes made of F40G40 fluoroplasticand FUT carbon plastic (Fig. 3

a

). The unitized con-struction is a bush of FUT carbon plastic and an insertmade of F40G40 fluoroplastic (Fig. 3

b

).

The use of binary supports, as experience shows,has increased the service life of the bearing up to 60thousand hours under a contact pressure of 0.7 MPa (ina number of cases up to 2 MPa). A 3–5-times increasein the service life has allowed one to use the bearingsduring the whole service period of the ship and2.5-times increase in permissible contact pressureresulted in smaller bearing length.

Face Seals of Hydraulic Turbines.

Along the shaftline of the hydraulic turbine high-speed face seals arefound that operate in water under contact pressuresfrom 0.1 to 0.5 MPa and sliding velocities up to 12 m/swith various counterbodies including those made of tinbronzes and corrosion-resistant steel 09Kh16N4B and07Kh16N4B.

Face seals are used in more than 40 hydroturbines ofRussian and foreign hydraulic power stations. Experi-ence shows that the upon replacement of the polymermaterials used before (Tordon, AMS-3) with FUT andFUT-F carbon plastics, the service life of the face sealincreases several times. In addition to face seals, radialshaft seals made of FUT carbon plastic are used suc-cessfully in three hydraulic turbines in cascades of Kemand Vyg hydraulic power stations (Russia).

Fig. 2.

Disk seals of pipelines of different diameters.

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Pump Friction Units.

Friction units of centrifugalpumps operate under contact pressures up to 1 MPa andsliding velocities up to 40 m/s. Under low contact pres-sures (below 0.1 MPa) polyamides and fluoroplasticsare used, polyamides being only used at <50

°

C. Underhigh contact pressures, e.g. in pump aggregates of thesystems for keeping seam pressure of type TsNS63-1800 that operate in oil deposits, bronze or babbitesextended bearings were used that operate under oillubrication.

The replacement of extended metallic bearings withthose made of carbon plastic FUT, FUT-N, andFUT-B83 made it possible to change the pump design,i.e. replace the extended bearing with the built-in onelubricated by the liquid to be pumped, i.e. water or oil.As a result, the use of an autonomous system of oillubrication has become unnecessary; the pump’s shafthas got shorter with its strength increased, while theweight of the whole pump device and its vibration havedecreased.

CONCLUSION

An actual scientific and practical problem has beensolved concerning the development and application ofhigh-strength antifriction polymer materials in ship-building and power machine building. UGET carbonplastics and FUT carbon glass plastics as well as theirmodifications for friction units with water lubricantexceed traditional polymer antifriction materials instrength and wear resistance. Their advantages are highvibrodamping characteristics, ability to reliably workunder dynamic loads and high hydrostatic pressures atthe presence of any lubricant (water, acids, alkali, oils,hydraulic liquids, etc.) with counterbodies of variousmaterials (steel, bronze, titanium alloys, ceramics,etc.).

The application of sliding bearings made of UGETand FUT carbon plastics makes possible:

(1) the creation of new constructions of ship propel-ler-rudder complexes that meet modern requirementson ecological safety, carrying capacity, and service life;

(2) an increase in reliability, ecological safety, andservice life of friction units of hydraulic turbines andpumps and thus in their competitiveness on world mar-ket;

(3) a reduction in damages and expenditures onrepair of machines and mechanisms.

Technical documentation including standard condi-tions on materials and articles as well as standards onthe technology of articles manufacture using the mate-rials have been developed. The Russian Sea Register ofnavigation has certified UGET and FUT materials. Theworkpieces made of the UGET and FUT materials aremanufactured on the experimental plant of the PrometeiCentral Research Institute.

UGET and UGET-N epoxy carbon plastics are effi-cient in heavy-duty slow-moving bearings operatingunder contact pressures of up to 60 MPa and slidingvelocities of up to 1 m/s under water lubrication orwithout lubrication at velocities of up to 0.2 m/s, i.e. inship mechanisms and systems of hydraulic turbines,pipeline equipment, contact power networks of rail-roads, etc.

FUT phenol carbon plastic and its modificationsFUT-F, FUT-N, FUT-B83, and FUT-F40G40 are effi-cient in high-speed bearings operating under contactpressures of up to 2–5 MPa and sliding velocities of upto 40 m/s when lubricated by water, oil products andaggressive liquids, viz. in journal bearings of shipshafts lines, face and radial seals of hydraulic turbines,bearings, and face seals of pumps.

1 24

32

Fig. 3.

Binary sliding support of propeller shaft 550 mm in diameter (

a

) and that of up to 200 mm (

b

): (

1

) longitudinal slots forprotectors; (

2

) FUT carbon plastic bush; (

3

) trapezoidal protectors made of F40G40 fluoroplastic; (

4

) longitudinal grooves for watersupply.

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ANTIFRICTION CARBON PLASTICS IN MACHINE BUILDING 545

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