Water-lubricated bearings have been applied to support ship screw shafts for over a hundered years.Development of plastic materials has caused that novel sliding polymers appeared available on the marketand being approved by classification institutions, possible to be applied in shipbuilding. However in thesubject - matter literature there is no reference to application of bearings fitted with metal or ceramicbushes in shipbuilding. Nevertheless they have important merits such as low resistance to motion, longservice life or stability of form. But some doubts are evoked by their large value of shape elasticity modulewhich can lead to local stress concentration at the bush edges in the case of non-axiality of bush and shaftaxes. Hence this work has been aimed at the testing of a bearing made of bronze-graphite silter. In thework is presented a comparison of measurement results of resistance to motion , hydrodynamic pressuredistributions in lubricating film as well as shaft axis trajectories of the bearing, with those made for a typicalelastic polymer bearing. The measurement results have showed high quality of the tested material. In theopinion of these authors it could be applicable to bearing ship propeller shafts.
