Bearings, Seals, and Drives

Belcan Corporation Bearing, Seals, and Drives (BS&D) has the experience and design capability to provide complete machinery sump systems. Radial and axial thrust bearings provide the support for the turbomachinery rotors and the sump systems provide lubrication, cooling, sealing, and damping required for reliable machinery operation. Belcan can provide bearings from “off the shelf“ designs to high performance fully engineered rolling element and plain bearings. Sump systems can be anything from “off the shelf” lip seals to buffered carbon, labyrinth, and brush seal combinations.

Lube systems remove heat from the bearings and sump walls and transfer it to cooling water, fuel, or air heat sinks. A properly designed system also lowers friction in the bearing and supports the rotor in a plain bearing. Belcan has the tools and experience to design the delivery, storage, conditioning, and monitoring to insure lubrication system performance. Belcan has experience in the design of test facilities and certification testing of scavenge systems that verify all attitude and altitude scavenge requirements will be met prior to customer use.

Oil loss, in the form of oil venting, from the air/oil separators, must be controlled through proper design. If oil consumption is severe, the operation time or range will be limited or the engine will smoke. The sump pressurization system must be balanced to always provide an inward flow to retain the oil, but not so high as to overload the separators. Belcan has the tools and experience to set seal requirements and do the compressible flow networks to balance the sump pressurization and vent systems. Belcan engineers have experience in designing the gearbox, oil tank, static, or main engine rotor air/oil separators to efficiently control the oil loss from the engine vent system.