2015 International Symposium on Lightning Protection (XIII SIPDA), Balneário Camboriú, Brazil, 28th Sept. – 2nd Oct. 2015.
Using Preloading to Protect Bearings
against Lightning Damage
Frank Leferink1,2, Alex Blaj2, Edwin Hogeman1, Rob Storck1
1 2
Thales Netherlands
Hengelo, The Netherlands
frank.leferink@nl.thalesgroup.com
Abstract— When a radar system onboard a ship is struck by
lightning the current has to be conducted via defined paths to
prevent damage. A key element to protect is the bearing system
between the rotating and stationary part. The conventional way
of protecting bearing is to provide a bypass current path via
additional measures such as a slip ring. The main cause of
damage to the bearing system is the arcing due to high voltage
difference between rollers and raceway. It is commonly assumed
that, if the radar is rotating, the lubrication between the rolling
elements and the raceway is a non-electrical conducting
hydrodynamic lubrication layer, and high voltages can be
developed. But if the bearing is sufficiently preloaded it is still
providing a conductive path via boundary lubrication. No arcing
occurs, and no damage. The concept of pre-loading the bearing
system has been evaluated using many experiments on stationary
and rotating bearings, and after performing endurance testing.
Keywords—bearing, rolling element, raceway, boundary film
lubrication, lightning
I. INTRODUCTION
The risk of equipment being struck by lightning is much
higher in the littoral, i.e. waters near the coast, than in the blue
water areas, far away from the coast [1]. Naval vessels were
operating in the blue water but this is changing rapidly to the
littoral. Radar systems are often located at a high position and
are therefore vulnerable to be struck by lightning. For rotating
or turnable radar systems the bearing system is the key
component between the rotating and stationary parts of a radar
system. No public data was found on lightning damage to radar
bearings, but we can compare the problem with that of bearings
on wind turbines. A main cause of damage for wind-turbine
power plants is lightning. The main-shaft bearing is one of the
most involved parts [2], and lightning damages to these
bearings can result in high costs of maintenance. In the main
standard IEC 61400-24 [3] only very generic information can
be found, such as that the bearing should be protected. In
[4][5][6][7] it is suggested that the damage of the main-shaft
bearing is caused by flashovers within the bearing lubricant, or
arcing, resulting in pitting. The possibly following high current
after the arc could result in overheating and welding, but this
latter phenomenon is not well described in literature. In a
conventional system, slip rings are conducting the lightning
around the bearing, in order to prevent arcing. This is also the
conventional approach protecting arcing in radar system
bearings. The slip ring consists of a series of carbon brush
elements divided over the circumference of the radar antenna
drive creating an electrical conductive path for the lightning
current. The disadvantage of these brush elements is the wear,
978-1-4799-8754-2/15/$31.00 ©2015 IEEE
University of Twente
Enschede, The Netherlands
frank.leferink@utwente.nl
resulting in very regular maintenance, for instance once per
year. Furthermore the wear is causing dust, thus pollution.
A slip ring around the main shaft is also the generic means
to protect the bearing of wind turbines against lubricant
flashovers, since the bearing is a very critical component to
exchange. Because of this protection, practical experience with
lightning damage to wind turbine bearings is scarce, wind
turbine bearings are not normally checked after lightning
strikes [4],[5]. Few investigations of the damaging effect of
lightning current on bearings have been carried out. In [8] the
tests were exaggerated by reducing the number of rolling
elements, to force the current through only 1 or 2 such
elements. But it was also concluded that the damages produced
by an arc can be bigger than the current conduction damage. In
the following sections the stationary bearing, the rotating
bearing, and a rotating preloaded bearing solutions are
discussed.
II. STATIONARY BEARING
A new trend in architecture during the last few years is the
use of retractable roofs in stadiums. These roof structures have
no fixed connections to ground; instead they have thousands of
moving contact points. Traditionally, for a building or a fixed-
roof stadium, lightning rods are grounded to the roof steel, the
roof steel connected to columns, and the columns connected to
a ground grid. But for a retractable roof it is likely that the
current will find its way to ground via bearings. This problem
is described in [9]. Lightning current tests have been performed
on a greased bearing in stationary condition, and it was found
that no damage occurred to rolling elements and raceways. The
retractable roof has been used in many areas where lightning
has hit the structure without damaging the structure.
This situation is comparable to a stationary radar, i.e. a
radar which is normally rotating but is in a non-active mode.
The weight of the radar in a parked position is pressing through
the lubricant and a direct contact between rolling elements and
the raceway is made. Then no arcing is possible, and no pitting
results. Comparable conclusions have been drawn in [8] where
lightning currents were conducted through bearings. The
identical tests to a rotating and a stationary bearing only
resulted in damage to the rotating bearing. It was concluded
that the cause of damage is arcing between rolling elements
and raceways at the breakdown points through the insulating
hydrodynamic lubrication layer present in the rotating bearing.
This was also concluded in [10], and confirms the assumption
that the arcing resulting in pitting is the cause of damage, and
not the current which might cause locally heating. Of course, in
case nearly all rolling elements are removed, such as in [8],
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 2015 International Symposium on Lightning Protection (XIII SIPDA), Balneário Camboriú, Brazil, 28th Sept. – 2nd Oct. 2015.
then only one roller has to conduct the current resulting in a
very high local current density, and inevitably damage.
III. LIGHTNING TESTS ON ROTATING BEARING
If a radar antenna is rotating a hydrodynamic layer of
lubricant is developed in the bearing which will result in an
insulating layer. If a lightning strikes the antenna, a high
voltage is developed, and flashover will occur, causing a spark,
which will ultimately result in pitting on the race and rollers
even at relatively low current levels. To prevent damage,
carbon brushes in a slip ring are often used to provide a low
impedance current path.
Preloaded bearings have been used many times to reduce
the variations in movements, to attain the required built-in
stiffness and running accuracy. Some experiments with an
electrostatic discharge gun on bearings showed that stationary
bearings were conducting (as expected), rotating bearings were Fig. 1. Damaged rolling element
not conducting due to the oil film (as expected), but that
rotating preloaded bearings were also conducting. This last
effect is completely against the conventional knowledge.
Therefore various experiments have been carried out to
determine the effect of preloaded bearings. Lightning current
tests, including the fast A pulse, the B pulse, and the high-
energy C pulse, have been performed on standard roller
bearings and preloaded roller bearings. The lightning current
generator is described in [11] and consists of:
x A-pulse test setup, cascade capacitor bank for short stroke
electrical currents up to 100 kA / 40 kV
x B-pulse artificial line high current test setup, capacitor-coil
circuit for currents up to 2 kA / 5 ms
x C-pulse test setup, 3-phase diode bridge circuit for DC
currents up to 500 A / 500 ms
As listed in TABLE I.

TABLE I. LIGHTNING PULSES

Pulse Peak Rise time Time to half Duration Fig. 2. Pitting in the raceway due to lightning
name current value
A 100 kA 9 µs 240 µs This was contrary to all common knowledge, namely that
B 2 kA 0.4 Ps 140 Ps under any conditions the bearing rings and rolling elements are
C 300 A - - 200 ms electrically isolated from one another by either a thin film of oil
or grease. Further research revealed that the possible cause
To perform a complete lightning test, the test setup is could be the boundary film lubrication which is available
subsequently connected to each of the test setups and loaded during very low speed, or during preloading. This is in
with the maximum output. contradiction to the common assumption that even at low speed
there is film lubrication, creating an isolated layer. The concept
A. Conventional bearing of using a sufficiently preloaded bearing has been filed in a
patent [12]. A special test setup was built to test a typical
The effect of the lightning strike using a normal bearing, on preloaded bearing configuration under normal operating
the rolling element, is shown in Fig. 1. The damaged raceway conditions, rotating at approximately 20 RPM, as shown in Fig.
is shown in Fig. 2. The bearing was rotating at normal speed. 3 and Fig. 4.
B. Preloaded bearing To simulate the currents typical for a lightning stroke, the
To test the effectiveness of a spark gap, a high voltage of setup was subjected to an A, B and C lightning pulse as
more than 25kV can be applied to the rotating part, with mentioned in TABLE I. The axial preload on the bearing-
respect to the stationary part, while rotating the bearing. This system was chosen for testing purposes in the order of several
means that the ball bearing should be covered with oil. On tens of kN, based on the loading of the radar system.
normal bearings it is possible to generate a spark. Using a a Measurements of the bearing resistance before and after each
preloaded bearing it was not possible to generate a spark lightning current test showed values below 1 m: (typical
because the bearing was creating a continuous conductive path. between 300 and 700 P:).

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 2015 International Symposium on Lightning Protection (XIII SIPDA), Balneário Camboriú, Brazil, 28th Sept. – 2nd Oct. 2015.
not damaged, only the upper bearing of the test setup was
disassembled following the endurance test. The results are
shown in Fig. 6. It is clear that the tested bearing is free of
pitting or welding spots.

TABLE II. RMS VALUES OF MEASURED VIBRATIONS DURING THE

ENDURANCE TEST

Duration [hr] 0:31 0:58 2:04 3:37 5:52 29:52 29:52 53:5253:52170:58
Axial 0.79 0.78 0.77 0.81 0.80 0.78 0.83 0.79 0.74 0.71
Radial 0.40 0.41 0.42 0.64 0.61 0.63 0.51 0.50 0.46 0.43
Tangential 0.62 0.63 0.66 0.68 0.69 0.73 0.91 0.76 0.70 0.67

Fig. 3. Test setup for testing a bearing. Picture taken during the lightning
test.
Thread-rod M12

To High Voltage soucre

Pre-load spring: F = 17.5 kN

connections between upper and lower bearing

Bearings
Isolation
(multyplex-plates)

drive mechanism Drive shaft

driver and driver-pin Peddestal

Fig. 4. Test setup for testing a bearing.

To monitor the condition of the bearing system, axial,

radial and tangential accelerations have been measured before
and after each lightning. This is a very well known technique to
estimate if there is some deviation, e.g. pitting, in the rolling
element and/or raceway. The vibrations have been measured
with a sample frequency of 2 kHz and a record length of 10 s.
From this raw data and FFT spectrum, the RMS value of the
vibration was calculated.
To test the remaining operational life of the bearing system, Fig. 5. Results of vibration measurements during the endurance test with
an endurance test was also performed. Assuming that wear is increased rotational speed.
equivalent to the total number of revolutions, the bearing Note: the graphs have been shifted slightly to give a 3D impression. The
system was set to rotate at a much higher speed than the scales should be read as if every line starts on the bottom-left corner.
operational speed in order to compress the total test time. The
bearing temperature was monitored to assure normal operating
conditions. The endurance test was stopped after 4 weeks at
high rotational speed. The root mean square (RMS) values of
the measured vibrations during the endurance test are shown in
TABLE II.
The differences between the subsequent measurements are
of the same order of magnitude as the standard deviation of the
set of measurement results. There are no differences in the
shape of the spectra that indicate any deterioration of the
bearing system. Since the results of the vibration Fig. 6. Ball bearings and bearing of the drive, using the normal preloaded
measurements indicate no deviations and that bearing system is situation: no damage.

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 2015 International Symposium on Lightning Protection (XIII SIPDA), Balneário Camboriú, Brazil, 28th Sept. – 2nd Oct. 2015.
IV. CONCLUSION
The rolling element and raceway of a bearing system can be
damaged by lightning. The primary cause is pitting caused by
the arcing between the rolling elements and raceway at the
breakdown points through the insulating lubrication layer
present in a rotating bearing. If a bearing is stationary and
loaded with some mass, then this weight is sufficient to press
through the lubricant such that a direct contact between rolling
elements and the raceway is made. No damage has been
observed by many researchers, and the presumed welding is
not found to be a dominant factor, if many rolling elements are,
in parallel, in contact with the raceway.
Experiments with an electrostatic discharge gun on
bearings showed that stationary bearings were conducting and
rotating unloaded bearings were not conducting due to the oil
film, as expected. However, rotating sufficiently preloaded
bearings were also conducting, which is against the
conventional ideas that there is always a lubricating film
present. Therefore, various lightning experiments have been
carried out to determine the effect of preloaded bearings. The
boundary lubrication is present if the bearing is sufficiently
preloaded, which assures a continuous electrical contact
between rolling elements and raceway. The experiments
performed show no increase of vibration, which is a measure of
possible pitting. Endurance tests have been performed to
ensure that even small pitting was not present. After the
endurance test the bearing was dismantled and inspected
visually. No damage was found. This proves the validity of the
preloading concept, to protect a bearing system against the risk
of lightning damage.
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