Experimental Analysis of Tribological Behaviors of Submersible Pump Thrust Bearing using Taguchi Method

Abstract

Pumps are widely used in domestic, agricultural, commercial and industrial application for lifting, transporting and handling of water. Majority of electricity is consumed by the pump and as bearing have clear effect on performance of the pump, so it quite necessary to increase the performance and efficiency of pump by reducing friction and wear of the thrust bearing of submersible type of pump. The entire work deals with the analysis of friction and wear of thrust bearing. A disk of SS 410 and pin of Teflon and polyamide 6 material was prepared and experimental investigation is done with the help of pin on disk tribometer at room temperature based on Taguchi’s L9 orthogonal array (OA) considering load, speed and sliding distance as the design parameter and coefficient of friction and wear rate as the responses under wet condition. The obtained results are analyzed using DOE and Minitab software which shows the average wear of Teflon is 30.09 micron and Polyamide 6 is 22.00 micron and COF is 0.16 and 0.10 respectively