Experimental investigation and optimization of tribological characteristics of wooden journal bearings

Wooden journal bearing is widely used in various applications such as wind turbines and marine bearings. In this paper, the wooden journal bearings is fabricated with teak wood due to their higher strength and durability. Various manufacturing operations such as cutting, turning, etc., are performed during the fabrication process of wooden journal bearings. After fabricating it, the experimental study is performed to analyze the influence of operating parameters on the tribological characteristics of wooden bearings. For this, the operating parameters such as speed and load are considered input variables. Whereas, the tribological characteristics of wooden bearings such as wear resistance and surface roughness are considered the output parameters. The major aim of this study is to analyze and optimize the tribological characteristics of wooden bearings. This can be achieved by increasing its wear resistance and increasing surface roughness. By using the response surface methodology (RSM), the influence of operating parameters (i.e. speed and load) on the tribological characteristics of wooden bearings are analyzed. Furthermore, the desirability function is used to obtain the optimal tribological characteristics of wooden bearings. These results show that speed is the most significant parameter for wear resistance and load for surface roughness of wooden bearings. Due to continuous operation, the wear rate of wooden bearings first increases and then decreases. In addition, the surface roughness of wooden bearings becomes smooth. The regression analysis develops the mathematical relationship between the operating parameters and the tribological characteristics of wooden bearings.