Why Does the Roller Chain Fail During Operation?

The roller chain is linked by a series of short cylindrical rollers and is driven by a gear called a sprocket. It is a simple, reliable, and efficient power transmission device. When the roller chain fails, the chain drive cannot be carried out, and we need to find out the cause of the failure in time. The followings are the five reasons for the failure of roller chains.

When the chain is driven, because the tension of the chain on the loose side and the right side is different, the chain works in a state of alternating tensile stress.

After a certain number of stress cycles, the roller chain parts are damaged due to insufficient fatigue strength, the chainplate will undergo fatigue fracture, or the sleeve and roller surface will appear fatigue pitting. In a well-lubricated chain drive, the fatigue strength determines the main factor of the chain drive capacity.

When the chain is driven, the pin shaft and the sleeve have relatively high pressure and rotate relative to each other, which causes the hinge to wear and the actual pitch of the chain to become longer (the actual pitch of the inner and outer links refers to the adjacent two), as shown in the figure.

After the hinge is worn, since the increase in the actual pitch mainly occurs in the outer link, the actual pitch of the inner link is almost unaffected by wear and remains unchanged, thus increasing the unevenness of the actual pitch of each link, making the transmission more unstable.

When the actual pitch of the chain is extended to a certain level due to wear, the meshing of the chain and the gear teeth becomes worse, resulting in the phenomenon of climbing and jumping teeth. Wear is the main failure form of the poorly lubricated open chain drive. As a result, the life of the chain drive is greatly reduced.

At high speed and heavy load, it is difficult to form a lubricating film between the contact surface of the pin and the sleeve, and direct metal contact leads to adhesion. Gluing limits the limit speed of the chain drive.

For chain drives with large loose edges and sag due to poor tension, the huge impact generated during repeated starting, braking, or reversing will make the pins, sleeves, rollers, and other components less fatigued. It will be broken by the impact.

The chain breaks due to overload

The low-speed and heavy-duty chain drive is broken due to insufficient static strength when overloaded.

If you want to know more about roller chains after reading the above, please continue to pay attention to our news.

As a professional quality chain supplier, we have accumulated rich manufacturing experience in this field. We have a strong R&D and production department and strictly follow the standard production, can provide you wit