Tapered Roller Bearing Hubs--IT'S HAPPENING
03-13-2016, 03:08 AM
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Tapered Roller Bearing Hubs--IT'S HAPPENING
I wanted to let you guys know that testing is moving forward on the new hub designs. There will be a new front and rear hub design that incorporates tapered roller bearings to better disperse the load and lessen the chance of failure. Lessen...this is racing, after all.
Front hubs--very basically the idea is not to reinvent the total hub, but keep it as stock as possible while improving the design. The OEM design bearings are low friction but also high stress. The fact that the races are built into the hub itself means that the same material used in the hub is also used on the races. Not good. Using tapered bearings means we can use much harder material on the races, and forged hub casting material on the hub.
The new hubs have new tapered roller bearing innards that are bigger and disperse the heat and load better. I won't go into the details of the hub, other than to say that they'll also include 70mm studs and the entire unit will be forged steel, not aluminum.
Provisions will be made for ABS rings. I'd like to hear whether pre-installed ABS rings are a must, or if the racers in this crowd that demand ABS are also OK popping on their own ABS rings.
The first part of the testing is almost done, and the FEA (Finite Element Analysis) is proving out what we thought. We tested for Cornering, Braking and Bump stresses on the hub. Not surprisingly, cornering came out as the highest stress value. The stresses on the stock hub in the bearing are representative of the stress concentrations at each ball bearing, but it's best not to consider this a test of real stress on the hub as much as a comparison of stress to the new hub design. We could really go into the weeds with testing, but this gives us a good baseline. This is also the reason why actual track testing will follow the FEA.
I'll be showing a lot more, but for now here's the load stress from braking on the front hubs:
Rear Hubs--these are also an issue, but not nearly the same as the fronts. These will also see a swap to tapered roller bearings. They'll also see a flange redesign that's wider and that has a smoother transition to the hub base. These should give many years of safe use and protect against the monster horsepower that some people are getting out of their swapped and turbo'd Miatas.
More pictures to come, but I wanted to show you our up to the minute progress.
Front hubs--very basically the idea is not to reinvent the total hub, but keep it as stock as possible while improving the design. The OEM design bearings are low friction but also high stress. The fact that the races are built into the hub itself means that the same material used in the hub is also used on the races. Not good. Using tapered bearings means we can use much harder material on the races, and forged hub casting material on the hub.
The new hubs have new tapered roller bearing innards that are bigger and disperse the heat and load better. I won't go into the details of the hub, other than to say that they'll also include 70mm studs and the entire unit will be forged steel, not aluminum.
Provisions will be made for ABS rings. I'd like to hear whether pre-installed ABS rings are a must, or if the racers in this crowd that demand ABS are also OK popping on their own ABS rings.
The first part of the testing is almost done, and the FEA (Finite Element Analysis) is proving out what we thought. We tested for Cornering, Braking and Bump stresses on the hub. Not surprisingly, cornering came out as the highest stress value. The stresses on the stock hub in the bearing are representative of the stress concentrations at each ball bearing, but it's best not to consider this a test of real stress on the hub as much as a comparison of stress to the new hub design. We could really go into the weeds with testing, but this gives us a good baseline. This is also the reason why actual track testing will follow the FEA.
I'll be showing a lot more, but for now here's the load stress from braking on the front hubs:
Rear Hubs--these are also an issue, but not nearly the same as the fronts. These will also see a swap to tapered roller bearings. They'll also see a flange redesign that's wider and that has a smoother transition to the hub base. These should give many years of safe use and protect against the monster horsepower that some people are getting out of their swapped and turbo'd Miatas.
More pictures to come, but I wanted to show you our up to the minute progress.
Last edited by cordycord; 03-13-2016 at 03:11 AM. Reason: grammar
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03-13-2016, 07:13 PM
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I was emailing back and forth with my FEA engineer last night 11pm to about 12:30. Boy what boring lives we must lead.
For those of you with a very high geek factor, the software used for the FEA is the Altair HyperWorks suite, specifically HyperMesh pre-processing, Optistruct solving and HyperView post processing. NASA, Ford, Boeing et al are customers.
Once we have samples to test, we will be using Keith Tanner (version 1.0) to test the front hubs as well as a couple of other track junkies to get some feedback.
For those of you with a very high geek factor, the software used for the FEA is the Altair HyperWorks suite, specifically HyperMesh pre-processing, Optistruct solving and HyperView post processing. NASA, Ford, Boeing et al are customers.
Once we have samples to test, we will be using Keith Tanner (version 1.0) to test the front hubs as well as a couple of other track junkies to get some feedback.
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03-13-2016, 08:54 PM
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Popping off rings is no issue, but it does mean that if you are trying to do an ABS swap you need to buy 2 sets of hubs, one set of yours, and one of ABS hubs.
Now if you also offered an ABS ring....
Now if you also offered an ABS ring....
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03-13-2016, 08:59 PM
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Exactly, for most cases. Just supplying a corner case where ABS rings would be preferable. I should have finished with, if you offered ABS rings as an option...
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03-14-2016, 12:48 PM
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Hub is the same OD as stock, and will be machined to accept the stock ABS rings? If so then swapping them off stock ABS hubs is easy (3 jaw puller and a harbor freight press).
--Ian
--Ian
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