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T. Wopelka, E. Corniani, C. Lenauer, M. Jech, F. Franek:
"Continuous Wear Measurement of Bearing Balls";
Talk: Failures Of Rolling Bearings, Bratislava; 10-21-2010 - 10-22-2010; in: "FAILURES OF ROLLING BEARINGS - Proceedings", (2010), 82 - 85.

Rolling bearings are among the most important components in modern machinery for ensuring functionality. Besides the load carrying capacity and the friction coefficient, the wear behaviour is a crucial factor with respect to the performance of a bearing.
The lifetime of precision bearings are determined by the geometric changes of their components and consequently by the occurring wear rates. Thus, the present study is focused on the adequate wear measurement of rolling bearing balls. For tribological tests the amount of wear is usually determined after the end of the test by weighing or optical investigations. As the wear behaviour generally consists of a running-in and constant wear phase this single measurement at the end can lead to a wrong estimation of bearing life time. Therefore, a continuous wear measuring system using radioactive tracers was applied for the present task. The running-in wear and the
convergence towards the constant wear rate can be markedly different. Therefore the continuous wear measurement is essential, especially for short term tests, to be able to predict long-term wear behaviour accurately and to interpret the influence of loading or lubricant.

Project Head Friedrich Franek:
Tribologie