Maintenance-free shaft guides in doors of high-speed train

Profile

• What was needed: drylin R shaft guides with the JUM-01 and JUM-02 liners, made from the iglidur material
• Requirements: no maintenance; fast, smooth movement; insensitivity to vibrations, dust, dirt, and temperatures as low as -40 °C
• Industry: rail industry
• Success for the customer: The linear guide liners are made of iglidur J, a material that requires no lubrication and thus no maintenance. It is quiet, temperature-resistant, and optimised in terms of coefficients of friction and wear.

The doors of the high-speed trains on the route between Beijing and Shanghai are guided with drylin R linear plain bearings.

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Problem

Completed in 2012, these high-speed trains connect Beijing and Shanghai. On the heavily travelled route, they were to cover the high transport requirements. High speed is not the only thing that taxes this trains, even though some of them travel at more than 350 kilometres per hour. The side doors of the wagons also have to move reliably during the countless opening and closing operations at stations and require as little maintenance as possible. Sticky doors or even breakdowns would be devastating on the tightly scheduled route. The two linear guides whose job is to ensure smooth movement on each door are thus extremely important. But there were other requirements of the linear technology: It had to work reliably even when it was moving quickly, be able to withstand strong vibrations, and allow reliable operation under fluctuating ambient conditions and temperatures as low as -40 °C.
The design had previously used metal bearings in tests, but they produced higher noise levels and did not always provide a smooth opening and closing movement. While the bearings had to be lubricated at regular intervals, the grease caused problems with dust and dirt, which increasingly collected at the door bearing points.

Solution

Today, train door movement uses drylin R shaft guides. Since the liners in the linear plain bearings are made of the lubrication-free iglidur material, they require no maintenance. This also makes them less sensitive to dust and dirt that can get into the bearing points when the train doors open. The iglidur J material is optimised for coefficients of friction and wear, extending service life. In the tests, the drylin linear plain bearings proved satisfactory in terms of noise and temperature behaviour and frictional resistance. In the drylin R bearings, the JUM-02 and JUM-01 guide systems are used – 5,000 of them in 120 trains. They both are made of iglidur J. 
Another important consideration is that the drylin linear bearings have low acquisition costs –These costs are as much as 40% lower than those for linear solutions with rolling elements.