Life prediction of thrust bearings based on accelerated wear test

The life prediction of thrust bearings was gotten by using accelerated wear test based on degradation model for the life verification of the thrust bearings with good wear-resisting property, and its life prediction model for the accelerated wear test was proposed. Based on the analysis of the failure mechanism, the accelerated wear test was conducted for 7200 h considering the load as an accelerated stress, the data of the wear volume indicating the degradation of the wear-resisting property were gotten and 0.94 of the reliability with 90% of the confidence level was predicted for the thrust bearings running for 10 a at service conditions. It is shown that the test time and cost can be saved by using the data of the accelerated wear test to predict the life of the thrust bearings with high-reliability, long-lifetime and very small wear rate.