Structural suspension of radial turret bearings

The invention relates to a structural suspension of radial turret bearing wheels (16) in a turret bearing (6), comprising a rail support structure (13) mounted on a turret bearing support structure (7), a circular rail (14) mounted to the rail support structure, and a plurality of radial wheels running on the mainly vertical inner side of the rail. The invention is a mainly vertical flexible shaft, for each radial wheel being supported by an upper and lower support with a part of the shaft protruding like a cantilever with the radial wheel mounted close to the outer end. Furthermore the inner side of the rail is a frustum with the shortest radius at the top and an aperture of 2ϒ, and the outer mainly planar contacting surface of the wheel has an angle θ relative to the rotational axis of the wheel, and is overlaid with a convex curvature across the contacting surface. The axis of the wheel is tilting an angle A relative to the unloaded position of the axis, when the shaft is under maximum load, and an angle E between Y and the tangent of the curvature across the contacting surface is less than zero at the top for conditions without load and larger than A at the bottom for conditions with maximum load. The bearing of the radial wheel is able to slide on the shaft the same distance as the maximum vertical movement of the turret relative to the rail under maximum load. The flexibility and length of the shafts, the clearance between the wheels and rail, and the positions of the upper and lower shaft supports (45,33) are chosen such that the sector distributing the radial load on the rail (14) increases as the radial load increases.