Preface

Bearings (both plain and rolling element) are used as important supporting elements for locating rotating components and confining their motion in desired direction. In order to ensure their operational reliability and desired life, these need to be properly designed/selected for an application more so because of ever increasing operational speeds. This requires a careful performance evaluation of different types of bearings considering aspects such as thermal stability, lubrication, contaminants in lubricants and controlling mechanism etc.

Traditionally, researchers have been focusing on both experimental as well as theoretical studies for the design and performance evaluation of bearings. However, theoretical studies have so far dominated the scenario with development of modeling and computational techniques like finite difference, finite element, fuzzy logic and neural networks and artificial intelligence. Apart from these techniques, scientists have the freedom to use different standard modeling and analysis tools developed from time to time for design and evaluation of bearings.

The title of this book was specifically chosen as *Performance Evaluation of Bearings.*  The present book is a compilation of different aspects contributing towards the performance evaluation of plain bearings (both journal and thrust), rolling element bearings and magnetic bearings. The book is divided into three broad sections and eight chapters presenting both theoretical and experimental work. Chapter 1 covers plain bearings, chapters 2 - 5 deal with rolling element bearings and chapters 6 - 8 present the treatment of magnetic bearings. The work presented in the book is quite relevant and useful to researchers working/intend to work in the area of design and performance evaluation of bearings both fundamental and advanced.

> **Dr. Rakesh Sehgal,**  National Institute of Technology, Hamirpur India

**Section 1** 

**Plain Bearings** 

**Section 1** 
