Radial spherical plain bearings have an inner ring with a sphered convex outside surface and an outer ring with a correspondingly sphered but  concave inside surface.  Their design makes them particularly suitable for  bearing arrangements  where alignment  movements  between shaft  and housing have to be accommodated, or where oscillating or recurrent tilting or slewing movements must be permitted at relatively slow sliding  speeds.  LS  radial  spherical  plain  bearings  are  available  with  different  sliding  contact  surface combinations, i.e. the sliding surfaces of inner and outer rings are made from different materials. There are two main groups：spherical plain bearings requiring maintenance(steel-on-steel) and maintenance-free spherical plain bearings.

    Radial  spherical  plain bearings requiring maintenance(steel-on-steel)  generally have hardened sliding contact  surface on both rings.  The surfaces are treated with molybdenum disulphide and phosphated.  It  has characteristics of wear-resistance and wear-corrosion. Bearings with this sliding contact surface combination require regular re-lubrication. The high strength of the sliding contact surfaces makes these bearings especially suitable for bearing arrangements where heavy loads of alternating direction, shock loads or heavy static loads have to be accommodated.