Significance of Roller Thrust Bearing and its Characteristics

The significance of the bearings, especially the rolling ones is to support and lead, with minimal friction, rotation or oscillation of the machine components such as axles, wheels or shafts. They also help transfer loads between these elements. The roller bearings allow high rotational speeds at low friction, while giving high precision and reducing noise, energy usage and wear and tear. 

These bearings are standardized and cost-effective components and they are interchangeable for they come in standard sizes, dimensions and series. Depending on the direction of the load the roller bearings support, they are categorized into radial bearings and thrust bearings. The roller thrust bearing is designed to support loads that act mainly along the axial shafts. Nevertheless, it accommodates pure axial loads acting in one or both directions based on the design.

Moreover, there are some types of roller thrust bearing that can also accommodate a combination of radial and axial loads; however, they cannot sometimes support high speed.

Roller Thrust Bearing | Image Resource : shutterstock.com

Get to Know Some Popular Types of Roller Thrust Bearings

Roller thrust bearings are designed to categorize them into cylindrical, tapered, spherical, and needle roller thrust bearings. Among these, the most important types and their applications are explained below.

Spherical Roller Thrust Bearing: These bearings are known for their asymmetrical rolling elements and raceways, which are specially designed to support not only the axial loads but also the radial ones in one direction. The thrust is passed between the raceways through the rollers at “angle to the bearing axis”. For the purpose, the rollers are guided by the flange. 

Some the characteristics of a spherical roller thrust bearing are:

• Helps carry heavy loads: With several rollers, set to have an optimum conformity with the raceways, this bearing helps support heavy axial as well as radial loads simultaneously.

• Support misalignment: The asymmetrical rollers and raceways help this bearing accommodate misalignment for they help self-aligning. 

• Useful for high-speed applications: The spherical thrust bearing is used for high-speed applications due to the rollers optimally complying with the washer raceways, as well as the cage designs.

• Long service life: The logarithmic profile of the rollers helps minimize the edge stresses, making the bearing give a long service life. 

Cylindrical Roller Thrust Bearings: The significance of this bearing is they support heavy axial and impact loads; however, they do support any radial loads. A cylindrical roller thrust bearing is known to have little axial space and it is very stiff. Some of the features of this thrust roller bearing is it has a separable design and it give a long service life.

The above-mentioned bearings are used in various applications in industries like automobile, metal, cement manufacturing, mining and production of machinery. It is however advisable to choose an appropriate type of roller thrust bearing to help use it effectively.