The following directions must be adhered to while designing plain bearings:
- We recommend that you use primarily bushings and linings according to the catalogs of plain bearing producers. Instead of mono-metallic bushings, the thin-walled three-metal bearings are now frequently used, which have the following arrangement:
- Solid steel base
- Load-carrying bearing metal based on lead bronze or aluminum alloy
- Running-in layer from mild bearing alloy with good sliding properties and resistant against seizing
- The layer of sliding bearing material should be thin, up to 0.3 mm, with respect to possible fatigue damage. Therefore only metallurgical sintering with load-carrying steel bushing is recommended, not the fixed part using dovetails.
- Oil inlet and lubrication slots for hydrodynamic bearings must be placed so, that they do not interfere with the pressure area. Also an ordinary oil inlet into the bearing must have fit smooth transitions into the sliding surface.
- The bearings must be designed for symmetric loading. Shafts and journals must be dimensioned so that the edge loading of bearings, due to movement, does not occur.
- During operation it is not possible to go beyond the settled operation parameters and it is necessary to ensure the cleanliness of lubrication oil by suitable filtration. Fine filters are necessary for use in demanding factories. These filters only let hard particles through (for example, contamination) up to the size of 2 to microns. The upper limit for factories is the maximum size of hard particles up to 15 microns.