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How Bearings Work

Bearings allow rotating or moving parts to spin or slide smoothly by reducing friction. They work by placing balls or rollers between the moving parts to bear the load. The main types are ball bearings, roller bearings, and thrust bearings, each suited for different load types and applications. Magnetic bearings that float components on magnetic fields are used for very high speeds. Giant roller bearings have moved heavy objects like Egyptian pyramid stones and the Cape Hatteras lighthouse.

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Anaruzzaman Sheikh
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54 views5 pages

How Bearings Work

Bearings allow rotating or moving parts to spin or slide smoothly by reducing friction. They work by placing balls or rollers between the moving parts to bear the load. The main types are ball bearings, roller bearings, and thrust bearings, each suited for different load types and applications. Magnetic bearings that float components on magnetic fields are used for very high speeds. Giant roller bearings have moved heavy objects like Egyptian pyramid stones and the Cape Hatteras lighthouse.

Uploaded by

Anaruzzaman Sheikh
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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How Bearings Work

by Karim Nice

Inside this Article


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Introduction to How Bearings Work


The Basics
Bearing Loads
Types of Bearings
Some Interesting Uses
Lots More Information
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Simply Science: Harnessing Energy to Do Work
Have you ever wondered how things like inline skate wheels and electric motors spin so smoothly and
quietly? The answer can be found in a neat little machine called a bearing.

The bearing makes many of the machines we use every day possible. Without bearings,
we would be constantly replacing parts that wore out from friction. In this article, we'll
learn how bearings work, look at some different kinds of bearings and explain their
common uses, and explore some other interesting uses of bearings.

The Basics
The concept behind a bearing is very simple: Things roll better than they slide. The wheels on your car are
like big bearings. If you had something like skis instead of wheels, your car would be a lot more difficult to
push down the road.
That is because when things slide, the friction between them causes a force that tends to slow them down.
But if the two surfaces can roll over each other, the friction is greatly reduced. A simple bearing, like the

kind found in a skate wheel


Bearings reduce friction by providing smooth metal balls or rollers, and a smooth inner and outer metal
surface for the balls to roll against. These balls or rollers "bear" the load, allowing the device to spin
smoothly.

Bearing Loads
Bearings typically have to deal with two kinds of loading, radial and thrust. Depending on where the bearing
is being used, it may see all radial loading, all thrust loading or a combination of both.

The bearings that support the shafts of motors and pulleys are
subject to a radial load.
The bearings in the electric motor and the pulley pictured above face only a radial load. In this case, most of
the load comes from the tension in the belt connecting the two pulleys.

The bearing above is like the one in a barstool. It is loaded purely in thrust, and the entire load comes from
the weight of the person sitting on the stool.

The bearings in a car wheel are subject to both thrust and


radial loads.
The bearing above is like the one in the hub of your car wheel. This bearing has to support both a radial load
and a thrust load. The radial load comes from the weight of the car, the thrust load comes from the cornering
forces when you go around a turn.

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Types of Bearings
There are many types of bearings, each used for different purposes. These include ball bearings, roller
bearings, ball thrust bearings, roller thrust bearings and tapered roller thrust bearings.

Ball Bearings
Ball bearings, as shown below, are probably the most common type of bearing. They are found in
everything from inline skates to hard drives. These bearings can handle both radial and thrust loads, and are
usually found in applications where the load is relatively small.

Photo courtesy The Timken Company

Cutaway view of a ball bearing


In a ball bearing, the load is transmitted from the outer race to the ball, and from the ball to the inner race.
Since the ball is a sphere, it only contacts the inner and outer race at a very small point, which helps it spin
very smoothly. But it also means that there is not very much contact area holding that load, so if the bearing
is overloaded, the balls can deform or squish, ruining the bearing.

Roller Bearings
Roller bearings like the one illustrated below are used in applications like conveyer belt rollers, where they
must hold heavy radial loads. In these bearings, the roller is a cylinder, so the contact between the inner
and outer race is not a point but a line. This spreads the load out over a larger area, allowing the bearing to
handle much greater loads than a ball bearing. However, this type of bearing is not designed to handle much
thrust loading.
A variation of this type of bearing, called a needle bearing, uses cylinders with a very small diameter. This
allows the bearing to fit into tight places.

Photo courtesy The Timken Company

Cutaway view of a roller bearing

Ball Thrust Bearing


Ball thrust bearings like the one shown below are mostly used for low-speed applications and cannot
handle much radial load. Barstools and Lazy Susan turntables use this type of bearing.

Photo courtesy The Timken Company

Ball thrust bearing

Roller Thrust Bearing


Roller thrust bearings like the one illustrated below can support large thrust loads. They are often found in
gearsets like car transmissions between gears, and between the housing and the rotating shafts. The helical
gears used in most transmissions have angled teeth -- this causes a thrust load that must be supported by a
bearing.

Photo courtesy The Timken Company

Roller thrust bearing

Tapered Roller Bearings


Tapered roller bearings can support large radial and large thrust loads.

Photo courtesy The Timken Company

Cutaway view of (left) a spherical roller thrust bearing and


(right) a radial tapered roller bearing
Tapered roller bearings are used in car hubs, where they are usually mounted in pairs facing opposite
directions so that they can handle thrust in both directions.

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Some Interesting Uses


There are several types of bearings, and each has its own interesting uses, including magnetic bearings and
giant roller bearings.

Magnetic Bearings
Some very high-speed devices, like advanced flywheel energy storage systems, use magnet bearings.
These bearings allow the flywheel to float on a magnetic field created by the bearing.
Some of the flywheels run at speeds in excess of 50,000 revolutions per minute (rpm). Normal bearings with
rollers or balls would melt down or explode at these speeds. The magnetic bearing has no moving parts, so
it can handle these incredible speeds.

Giant Roller Bearings


Probably the first use of a bearing was back when the Egyptians were building the pyramids. They put round
logs under the heavy stones so that they could roll them to the building site.
This method is still used today when large, very heavy objects like the Cape Hatteras lighthouse need to be
moved.

Earthquake-Proof Buildings
The new San Francisco International Airport uses many advanced building technologies to help it withstand
earthquakes. One of these technologies involves giant ball bearings.

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