Oscillating Bronze Bearing Life Test

Unless there are aggravating factors you have not mentioned, you should not be conducting this test, at least not on this geometty.

2) Conduct a life test on a test article that can be continuously loaded, say at +20% load and velocity for continuous time, e.g. press a button of the sleeve material on a rotating shaft turning contimuously. Make the obvious adjustments (re temperature rise etc.)

Brian W

I'm not sure that a continuous rotation test would correlate to the application.

Bronze bearings, porous or not, exhibit good life when they are allowed to develop a hydrodynamic bearing film, however thin. Bronze's big advantage is that it doesn't mar a mating steel surface during startup, before the film has developed. Small oscillations effectively put the bearing system through a startup twice per cycle, so I'd expect a life much shorter than the usual calculations would predict. I assume that's the reason for proposing the test in the first place; they're already experiencing anomalously limited life.

For a rotation of only 6 degrees total, they probably should be looking at flexures.

-Mike-