Spherical roller bearings are self-aligning bearings designed for heavy radial loading. The rollers are barrel shaped. These bearings automatically compensate for large angular errors commonly called shaft misalignments. They are usually of double row design, both the rows of the rollers having common spherical raceways in the outer ring. This feature has great practical importance in those cases where it is difficult to obtain exact parallelism between the shaft and housing both axes.

Spherical roller bearings are commonly found in Industrial Gear boxes, Conveyors, Cement Grinding Rolls, Sugarcane crushers and passenger coach axle boxes of Railways.

Spherical roller thrust bearings can accommodate heavy axial load, they are adapted to high speeds. These bearings are fitted with asymmetrical barrel shaped roller.

Under normal load conditions, the allowable misalignment is 1˚ to 2˚, although this will vary depending upon the bearing’s dimension series. These bearings use machined copper alloy cages and a guide sleeve is attached to the inner ring to guide the cage. The axial load capacity of these bearings is high, and a certain amount of radial load can also be accommodated when the ring is in an axially loaded state.