GGB tribological solutions move the industrial world one step closer to the future. Our products are used in tens of thousands of critical applications every day—around the planet. Our goal is to provide reliable, maintenance-free surface solutions for almost any application—no matter where those demands take our products.
GGB's diverse polymer coating solutions encompass some of the most state-of-the-art coating technologies available. Our TriboShield® product line includes seven standard formulations that cover the full spectrum of mechanical, thermal and chemical capabilities offered by today's coating materials. They can also be applied to nearly any surface, regardless of shape or material, making their potential almost endless. And when it comes to working with and enhancing the performance of your existing bearing and polymer coatings solutions, our TriboMate product line is specifically designed to be paired up— all leading to enhanced performance.
The excellent low friction and high wear resistance performance of GGB metal-polymer bearings make them ideal for hundreds of applications in numerous and diverse industries. Depending upon application requirements, metal-polymer composite bearings can be produced in many shapes and sizes.
GGB's Engineered Plastic Polymer bearings provide excellent wear resistance and low friction in both dry and lubricated operating conditions over a wide range of applications. Engineered plastic bearings are made from thermoplastic bearing material processed by injection moulding. This production method enables us to produce unlimited dimensions in accordance to our standard, and also parts with special designs and features.
GGB's Fiber Reinforced Composite products typically consists of a filament-wound, fiberglass-impregnated, epoxy backing with a variety of low-friction wear-resistant bearing linings. These self-lubricating fiber reinforced composite bearings are particularly effective in applications where the relative motion is not sufficient to promote circulation of the oil or grease used with more conventional bearings. GGB Fiber Reinforced Composite bearings are available as bushes, plates, bearing segments and special forms, depending on the particular material type.
Bimetal and metal bearings offer excellent corrosion resistance in industrial outdoor applications and in water, marine and offshore environments. GGB offers a broad range of sizes, forms and materials in monometallic and bimetallic bearings.
Engineered as a solution to conquer misalignment reduction when high demands are placed on bearings, GGB's UNI, MINI and EXALIGN® self-aligning shaft bearing assemblies offer improved equipment performance under standard bearing assemblies by reducing stress and friction. Offering superior performance in a wide variety of applications, GGB's self-aligning assemblies are available in both standard and custom configurations.
GGB has been putting the world in motion for over 120 years with industry-leading tribological bearings, coatings and assemblies. From Polymer Coatings and Metal-Polymer bearings to Fiber Reinforced Composite bearings and self-aligning shaft bearing assemblies, our solutions are specifically designed to reduce friction and optimize performance and durability.
Tribology is the science of wear, friction and lubrication, and encompasses how interacting surfaces and other tribo-elements behave in relative motion in natural and artificial systems. This includes bearing design and lubrication.
GGB’s TriboU is intended to provide the working engineer, who may or may not be a user of GGB’s surface engineered solutions, to understand and implement basic tribological concepts in the design, manufacture and use of industrial equipment.
At GGB, we aren’t afraid to take risks for our customers. We are passionate about the work we do and believe that same passion contributes to the level of innovation that can enhance human potential. We take pride in working closely with customers in the early stage of a design to think broadly and boldly, and to expand beyond traditional surface engineered solutions. We offer reliable partnerships based on trust, compassion, determination, collaboration and respect.
GGB seeks out collaborative, long-term relationships with each one of our customers. Our diverse expertise gives us a deep understanding of the challenges you face. When you partner with us early, our GGB engineering team is able to review your assemblies and make sure both the bearing and surrounding components are optimized for performance and cost-effectiveness.
Tribology is the science of wear, friction and lubrication, and encompasses how interacting surfaces and other tribo-elements behave in relative motion in natural and artificial systems.This includes bearing design and lubrication.
Tribology is not an isolated science, but rather a complex, multidisciplinary endeavor where advances are made by collaborative efforts of researchers from fields including mechanical engineering, manufacturing, materials science and engineering, chemistry and chemical engineering, physics, mathematics, biomedical science and engineering, computer science, and more.
One of the most important pillars of tribology is the system analytical and system related thinking.
Friction and wear are not material properties. They are responses to a specific tribological system which typically includes a bearing, shaft and lubricant combination and as such are influenced by a wide range of factors. The tribological sub-system in Figure 1 provides an overview of common factors which affect friction and wear values:
This tribological system is composed of the collective stress/operational inputs, system structure and the functional and loss outputs. The collective stress includes the technical and physical load parameters including load, sliding speed and duration along with the movement and temperature conditions stressing the system-structure. The system-structure is determined by the property profiles of the substantial elements including the base, opposing body and ambient and the intermediate medium.
The greatest challenge is that friction and wear values cannot be easily transferred from one system to another eg from a tribological test rig to a real application. Comparisons between measured values are only feasible when based on a very similar tribological system. The tribological behavior of materials can ony be estimated for specific applications based on modeling and simulation testing provided the specific operating conditions of the application and test environment are the same.
Friction is the force of resistance to motion between two bodies in contact. Friction can be described on the macroscopic level by the basic laws of friction from physicists Guillaume Amontons and Charles-Augustin de Coulomb. These physicists found a linear relationship between resulting friction force and applied normal load. Based on this, a dimensionless main parameter can be derived, called the coefficient of friction. It is defined by the ratio of the resulting friction force and applied normal force.
However, the actual mechanism of sliding friction occurs at a microscopic level, which means tribological theories on friction also involve the topography of the surfaces. The tribologist differentiates between the real contact area and the nominal contact area (geometric dimensions), which accounts for any voids or non-contacting portions of a solid element. The mechanisms responsible for the energy transforming process in the near surface area include:
1
Wear is defined as the irreversible material loss of interacting surfaces. Physical and chemical elementary processes within the area of contact of a sliding pairing subsequently leading to change in material and shape of the friction partners are known as wear mechanisms. These wear mechanisms include:
Friction and wear mechanisms are strongly affected by the structure of the tribological system as well as on the induced collective stress:
µ=f(tribo-structure(t),induced collective stress(t))
w=f(tribo-structure (t),induced collective stress(t))
Friction and wear mechanisms do not occur in an isolated fashion, but rather through a superposition of mechanisms that is challenging to quantify and control for. This superposition occurs in tribo-technical systems in non-detectable proportions and in proportions that vary across time and place, making it nearly impossible to calculate friction and wear processes in a tribo-contact. This is why tribological tests are so crucial for estimating tribological behavior. If we want to interpret and understand tribologically-measured data and mechanism-oriented research, we need complete knowledge of the acting mechanisms in a tribo-contact.
Tribologists classify friction, wear and lubrication conditions according to the following schedules:
Tribological testing allows us to gain information about tribo-performance of materials to drive new and better material designs. We can then target material compositions to achieve specific and better tribological properties.
Tribological test results and surface analytical methods help us estimate the tribo-performance including friction and wear, failure mechanisms, kinetics of transfer films of existing materials and new prototypes based on various factors and influences. This information helps us see and understand variables like the effects of various material compositions including filler, filler concentration, synergetic effects of fillers, material structure as well as the impact of other elements of they system structure.
Tribologically optimised contacting surfaces
For an overview of the historical advancements in bearing technology driven by tribo-research, read this article in Eureka Magazine. It covers rudimentary roller bearings used by the ancient Egyptians, ball bearings used by the Romans 40BC, the roles of heat treatment of hardened steel and oxide-based ceramics. It also covers he development of the first self-lubricating plain metal-polymer bearing by GGB.
Tribology plays a central role in applications in which two contacting surfaces move in relation to each other. Some industries place higher demands on tribological systems due to their mission criticality, continuous operation requirements or extreme conditions.
This depends strongly on the application. Some applications require low friction (e.g. bearing materials) while others require high friction (e.g. brake systems). For most of the applications, minimum wear of the materials is a primary goal. For many applications, a defined sweet spot between low friction levels and good wear performance is often targeted.
When designing experiments describing friction and wear, tribological testing can be placed into one of six main categories, from field tests in Category I to simplest laboratory model tests Category VI.
Category I: A field trial is conducted under normal operating conditions, which may include extended operating conditions. This results in poor repeatability but is close to real world requirements the tribological system will face.
Category II: Experiments are undertaken with a complete piece of equipment in a plant environment. These experiments may achieve results close to normal operating conditions and can be conducted over a period of time to replicate extended operating conditions while limiting environmental impact.
Category III: Components, subsystems or assemblies are tested in a laboratory approximating normal extended operating conditions, yielding medium repeatability
Category IV: Laboratory testing is conducted on serial standard components using scaled down testing plant apparatus.
Category V: Experiments are conducted on a specimen with test equipment to deliver close to normal operating conditions with excellent repeatability.
Category VI: A bench test is conducted with simple laboratory test equipment.
It is important to remember that in categories I through III, the system structure of the original tribo- aggregate remains consistent, and only the collective stress is simplified. Categories II and III offer more reproducible collective stresses than category I. In contrast, in categories IV through VI, the system structure is simplified with the disadvantage of decreasing predictability in the transferability of test results to comparable practical tribo-technical systems. Categories IV through VI offer better metrology of the sub tribo-contact, lower cost and a tighter testing timeframe.1 So with an ascending order of the test categories the test time as well as the test cost increases significantly, but transferability of the test result increases as well.
Tribological testing of bearing materials can be divided into four main categories:
1 Horst Czichos, Karl-Heinz Habig: Tribologie Handbuch: Tribometrie, Tribomaterialien, Tribotechnik, Vieweg+Teubner Verlag, 2010
GGB develops tribologically optimized materials based on tribological results. We combine this knowledge of material science and performance with a thorough understanding of the tribological performance of our products and how they align with our customers’ application requirements.
Lubricants are a part of tribology, but in some cases the lubrication can be built into material of tribo-system components.
Material designers therefore create specific materials for dry lubrication conditions, achieving a superior tribological performance related to friction and wear with a reduction or elimination of liquid lubricants.
Because the shaft is an essential element of the tribological system structure of the bearing sub-system. Its properties have a direct impact on friction and wear as well as on all other occurrences in a bearing/shaft contact. Essential shaft properties include:
The scope of the tribological system is of essential importance in bearing selection. A high level overview of considerations would include the following
1. The induced collective stress including:
2. The mating partner:
3. The interfacial medium and its property profile
4. The ambient medium and its properties
5. Thermal conductivity of the construction.
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