PEEK Thrust Bearing for Harsh Pumping Environments

Thrust bearings designed and developed by US-based Waukesha Bearings Corporation implementing Victrex PEEK polymer have proven successful after three years of continuous use, showing minimal wear despite the presence of system debris. Hiperax bearings were installed in wet wound heater lift pumps by Weir Engineering Services.

The bearings manufactured from Victrex PEEK 450FC30 are insert moulded onto a substrate by High Performance Mouldings of Sandiacre, near Nottingham.

According to Dr Guy Pethybridge, Global Product Manager for Waukesha Bearings 'Waukesha saw the need to develop a thrust bearing solution that could handle high load capacity in water-lubricated applications.We developed the Hiperax thrust bearing and decided to implement Victrex PEEK into the design because of its unique set of excellent tribological properties and attributes.

The combination of our design expertise and the properties and wear resistance of Victrex PEEK polymer resulted in the development of Hiperax thrust bearings.The Hiperax bearings can support loads of up to 8MPa whilst running continuously in water at 65C'.

Victrex PEEK polymer bearings provide an alternative in both oil-lubricated applications and those lubricated by the process fluid.These bearings combine excellent surface properties with a high working temperature.

In the conventional oil-lubricated environment, the polymer-faced bearing will run hotter than its metallic counterpart because of the low thermal conductivity of the material.

In practice, this leads to thinner working oil films compared to metallic surfaced bearings, but, because of the improved surface properties of the polymer materials, the actual load capacity can be higher.

The benefits of a polymer solution can be summarised as: higher operating temperatures up to 250C (480F); higher load capability; corrosion resistance when operating in process fluids; and high electrical resistivity (better than 109 ohm.m).'It is clear that the designers of the next generation of pumps have many options available to cope with the wide range of pump operating conditions.

Our Hiperax thrust bearings made with Victrex PEEK are still in use after three years of operation with minimal wear, despite the presence of system debris such as rust, which certainly proves polymers offer significant benefits in the right circumstances' concluded Dr Pethybridge.

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