Abstract
Electrical discharges in rotating machines may interest every kind of bearings, both roller, oil-film thrust or journal, when an electrical machine is installed in the shaft-line. The consequence of this phenomenon is a reduction of the performances of the bearing such as its load capacity, leading to possible failures of the bearing pads mainly due to overheating. In this paper, a case history of electro discharge machining of the thrust bearing of a small steam turbine is presented. A detailed model, able to take into account the effect of electrical pitting and loading capacity decreasing as a consequence of the damage of the Babbitt metal, is also proposed in the paper. Simulations show that the phenomenon causes the irreversible failure of the thrust bearing.
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Chatterton, S., Pennacchi, P., Vania, A. (2015). Performances Degradation of Tilting-Pad Thrust Bearings Due to Electrical Pitting. In: Pennacchi, P. (eds) Proceedings of the 9th IFToMM International Conference on Rotor Dynamics. Mechanisms and Machine Science, vol 21. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06590-8_80
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06590-8_80
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