
The wheel bearing is one of the key components of a car. Its main function is to carry weight and provide precise direction of rotation of the hub, which requires it to be able to withstand both axial and radial loads.
The wheel bearing is one of the key components of a car. Its main function is to carry weight and provide precise direction of rotation of the hub, which requires it to be able to withstand both axial and radial loads.
Traditional automobile wheel bearings consist of two sets of tapered roller bearings or ball bearings, which are installed, lubricated, sealed, and clearance adjusted on a car factory assembly line. This design creates difficulties during assembly at the factory, high cost, low reliability, and when serviced in repair shops, it requires washing, lubricating and adjusting the bearings.
The wheel bearing unit is designed based on standard angular contact ball bearings and tapered roller bearings. It integrates two bearings into one and has the advantages of good assembly, no need for clearance adjustment, light weight, compact design, high load-bearing capacity, sealed bearing pre-lubricant, no need for external hub seal and no maintenance. Such units are already widely used in passenger cars, and there is a tendency for their gradual introduction in trucks.
In the past, passenger car hubs most commonly used pairs of single row tapered roller bearings or ball bearings. With the development of technology, wheel bearing units have become widely used in passenger cars. The volume and scale of use of wheel bearing units is constantly growing, and by now they have developed to the third generation:
The first generation consists of double row angular contact ball bearings.
In the second generation, the outer ring has a flange for mounting the bearing, which allows you to simply slide the bearing onto the journal and secure it with a nut. This makes car repairs easier.
The third generation of wheel bearing units provides for the joint operation of the bearing unit with the ABS anti-lock braking system. The hub assembly is designed with an inner and outer flange: the inner flange bolts to the drive shaft, and the outer flange holds the entire bearing assembly together.
The fourth generation wheel bearing assembly combines the constant velocity joint and bearing into a single unit, eliminating the shortcoming of existing technology in which combining the hub and CV joint into one design led to an increase in the size and weight of the hub. The development of the fourth generation wheel bearing unit has already been successfully completed, and it is confident that it will be widely used in various types of vehicles in the near future. The features of these units include: no need to adjust the bearing mounting clearance, more rational bearing assembly technology, weight reduction and volume reduction, the possibility of almost constant use after a single addition of lubricant, which reduces the overall production cost and promotes mass distribution.