A time-dependent reliability analysis method for bearing lubrication

In bearing lubrication, the changes of load, speed, and clearance cause the oil film thickness changes over time. The oil film will rupture when the thickness is insufficient, and the bearing lubrication will fail. In this paper, a novel lubrication reliability estimation method was presented based on the first passage method. The Dowson-Higginson formula was used to calculate the minimum oil film thickness, then the time-dependent reliability was solved by the first passage method (FPM) and first-order reliability method (FORM). The effectiveness of the proposed method was verified by numerical example. This method can be used to analyze the influence of random velocity, load, and time-dependent parameters on lubrication reliability over the whole time domain.