Temperature Rise Prediction of Oil-Air Lubricated Angular Contact Ball Bearings Using Artificial Neural Network

Abstract

Background: Angular contact ball bearing is an important component of many high-speed rotating mechanical systems. Oil-air lubrication makes it possible for angular contact ball bearing to operate at high speed. So the lubrication state of angular contact ball bearing directly affects the performance of the mechanical systems. However, as bearing rotation speed increases, the temperature rise is still the dominant limiting factor for improving the performance and service life of angular contact ball bearings. Therefore, it is very necessary to predict the temperature rise of angular contact ball bearings lubricated with oil-air. Objective: The purpose of this study is to provide an overview of temperature calculation of bearing from many studies and patents, and propose a new prediction method for temperature rise of angular contact ball bearing. Methods: Based on the artificial neural network and genetic algorithm, a new prediction methodology for bearings temperature rise was proposed which capitalizes on the notion that the temperature rise of oil-air lubricated angular contact ball bearing is generally coupling. The influence factors of temperature rise in high-speed angular contact ball bearings were analyzed through grey relational analysis, and the key influence factors are determined. Combined with Genetic Algorithm (GA), the Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model based on these key influence factors was built up, two groups of experimental data were used to train and validate the ANN model. Results: Compared with the ANN model, the ANN-GA model has shorter training time, higher accuracy and better stability, the output of ANN-GA model shows a good agreement with the experimental data, above 92% of bearing temperature rise under varying conditions can be predicted using the ANNGA model. Conclusion: A new method was proposed to predict the temperature rise of oil-air lubricated angular contact ball bearings based on the artificial neural network and genetic algorithm. The results show that the prediction model has good accuracy, stability and robustness.