Frictional vibration behaviors of a new piezo-damping composite under water-lubricated friction

Water-lubricated bearings have become an important component of marine propulsion systems due to the requirements of environmental friendliness and concealability. However, water-lubricated bearings are often subjected to bending stress, additional stress, frictional resistance and other multi-factor effects, resulting in boundary friction or even dry friction on the friction interfaces when encountering unique working conditions such as engine start-stop, steering, low-speed, and heavy-load. The severe frictional processes often induce vibration behaviors and generate frictional noise, which seriously weakens the sound concealment performance and service life of marine propulsion systems. Therefore, it is urgent to improve the vibration and sound pressure behaviors of the composite bearings under water-lubricated conditions. In this study, novel barium titanate/carbon black/polyurethane composites (BaTiO3/CB/PU) are fabricated and then explored the damping capacities and tribological properties of the new polymers. The results showed that the BaTiO3 concentrated on transforming the mechanical energy generated by frictional vibration into electrical energy which generates the thermal energy. The water cooled the frictional heat and the piezo-damping heat. This energy dissipation method increased the damping capacity to reduce the vibration and noise behaviors induced by friction. The composite with 3.0 wt% BaTiO3 performed the highest loss factor under the operating temperatures and presented the best frictional vibration reduction properties. The knowledge obtained in this study is useful not only to explore a new piezo-damping composite, but also to provide a theoretical basis for developing higher performance polymer-based water-lubricated bearing.