Design and control of a linear bearing durability tester

In order to better understand the characteristics of linear bearings under high load and high speed conditions, a machine capable of testing bearings under these conditions was created. The machine is flexible in its design, allowing testing of a wide variety of bearing styles and under many different load conditions. The maximum load that the machine can provide in any single direction is over 11 kN, with a maximum moment-application capability of over 850 N-m. Additionally, an open-loop load control system and closed-loop motion control system were designed for this application. Finally, a LabView based program integrates the control systems and allows the user to easily calibrate the applied loads, run tests, and analyze data. The overall result is a function test machine capable of testing linear bearings under high load and high speed conditions, either for short term testing of durability verification.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Mechanical Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2008

Author dc:creator

• Pope, Benjamin J

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Christopher Paré and John J. Leonard.

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/43015

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/43015