Abstract
THE pitting failure of rolling bearings is now generally regarded as a surface fatigue phenomenon, and recent work1 has shown that the presence of water in mineral oil lubricants can accelerate the failure of ball-bearings manufactured from conventional E.N.31 steel. A possible mechanism for this phenomenon has been suggested by Grunberg and Scott2. The hypothesis is that vacancy-induced diffusion of hydrogen into the highly stressed surface material produces ‘hydrogen embrittlement’. To test this theory, four-ball rolling tests1,2 were carried out with a lubricating oil containing 6 per cent tritiated water of high activity (5 c./ml.). The rolling four-ball test produces a track on the driving ball in which pits are normally formed. The three driven balls are stressed to a lesser extent and usually do not show evidence of surface fatigue. Balls from tests using tritiated water were washed with acetone and partially immersed in a liquid scintillator (0.3 per cent 2,5-diphenyloxazole + 0.01 per cent l,4[2-(5-phenyloxazolyl)]-benzene in toluene) and the activity counted using a (refrigerated) ECKO N612 unit. When the part of driving balls carrying the fatigued track was immersed in the liquid scintillator, counting-rates of between 1,000 and 2,000 counts/sec. were recorded. The unfatigued part of driving balls gave only counts of about 40 counts/sec. against the background count of 30 counts/sec. The activity in the fatigued tracks decreased with time and tended towards the background-level after about five days.
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References
Grunberg, L., and Scott, D., J. Inst. Petrol., 44, 419, 406 (1958).
Grunberg, L., and Scott, D., J. Inst. Petrol., 46, 440, 259 (1960).
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GRUNBERG, L., JAMIESON, D., SCOTT, D. et al. Hydrogen Diffusion in Water-accelerated Rolling Surface Fatigue. Nature 188, 1182–1183 (1960). https://doi.org/10.1038/1881182b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/1881182b0
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