The article reviews European Union case law on ship registration and sea-faring in EU member states. The EU, aside from encouraging ship registration in member states, enacts choice of law rules in order to mandate the EU lawor domestic law of member states as proper law for seafaring. Today, the larger number of major Polish shipowners fly a flag of convenience (such as Greece or Cyprus), which means Polish merchant ships do not carry Poland’s civil ensigns.
Bearings of three-bearing shafts are usually treated as ideally-rigid articulated supports. In literature, the reactions of supports and bending moments of multibearing shafts are calculated taking into consideration only shaft elasticity. In fact, also deformation is present in these bearings, and it changes the shaft bending line. The deformation thus influences distribution of bending moment and reaction of supports. It is the most important difference when comparing two-bearing with three-bearing shafts.
Moreover, in most types of bearings, a reactive bending moment is the response of bearing to unparallel position of inner bearing rings in relation to outer rings, that is to the tilt angle. As a result, real loads of rolling elements differ from theoretical ones.
The aim of the paper is to develop a method of calculating generalized loads in rolling bearings of a three-bearing shaft taking into consideration shaft deformation, deformations in bearings and reactive moments of bearings caused by tilt angle.