Influence of Chief Vein on Tribological Behavior of Vein-Bionic Textured Rolling Element Bearings Under Starved Lubrication

Abstract

In this research, to investigate the effect of the chief vein (chief trunk of leaf vein) on the friction reduction and wear resistance of vein-bionic textured bearings, four vein-bionic texture patterns inspired by two types of leaves (Clausena lansium, ash) were manufactured on the raceways of the shaft washers of 81107TN cylindrical roller thrust bearings (CRTBs) using a fiber laser marking system. A vertical universal wear test rig equipped with a customized tribopair was employed to record the coefficient of friction (COF) of bearings under starved lubrication, and the generated wear losses of the shaft washers and worn surfaces were characterized. Static finite-element analyses (SFEA) of paths located at different depths in the vertical direction of contact regions for the raceway were conducted to reveal the surface stresses. The results show that all vein-bionic textures exhibit improved tribological properties under starved lubrication, while textures with no chief vein are prone to excellent wear resistance compared to textures with a chief vein. The stress distribution of vein-bionic textures with no chief vein is significantly impacted by various depths: The subsurface stresses reduce with increased depths, but textures with a chief vein have the reverse tendency. A reasonable influence mechanism of the chief vein on the tribological properties of resulting textures is proposed.

Keywords:

• Rolling element bearing
• friction and wear
• vein-bionic texture
• chief vein
• starved lubrication

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Statement of Retraction: Influence of Chief Vein on Tribological Behavior of Vein-Bionic Textured Rolling Element Bearings Under Starved Lubrication

Conflicts of interest or competing interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Data and code availability

The original codes and data used to support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon request.

Ethical approval

This study did not involve experiments using human tissue.

Additional information

Funding

The research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 52075112), the National Key R & D Program of China for Young Scientists (no. 2021YFB200007), and the Major Scientific and Technological Project of Heilongjiang Province for Ten Million Project (no. 2021ZX05A03).