Maintenance Free and Low Maintenance Plain Bearings for Added Car Comfort

The trend towards increased comfort is one of the basic trends in advances in motor vehicles. The present paper outlines how the vehicle industry tries to meet this customer demand and deduces the general requirements for maintenance free and low maintenance plain bearings. Therefore, the principles of the materials and operation of maintenance-free dry plain bearings are presented. For selected applications such as hinges, seat adjustments, windshield wipers and belt tension units examples of new bearing developments are given. These developments contribute significantly to an increase in overall comfort for the occupants by smoother running manual / automatic operations, lowering the acoustic level in the interior or as components in enhanced adaptation mechanisms.