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The effect of outer ring elastodynamics on vibration and power loss of radial ball bearings

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journal contribution
posted on 2020-11-19, 09:42 authored by Rob Turnbull, Ramin RahmaniRamin Rahmani, Homer Rahnejat
Ball bearings are an integral part of many machines and mechanisms and often determine their performance limits. Vibration, friction and power loss are some of the key measures of bearing performance. Therefore, there have been many predictive analyses of bearing performance with emphasis on various aspects. The current study presents a mathematical model, incorporating bearing dynamics, mechanics of rolling element-to-races contacts as well as the elastodynamics of the bearing outer ring as a focus of the study. It is shown that the bearing power loss in cage cycles increases by as much as 4% when the flexibility of the outer ring is taken into account as a thick elastic ring, based on Timoshenko beam theory as opposed to the usual assumption of a rigid ring in other studies. Geometric optimisation has shown that the lifetime power consumption can be reduced by 1.25%, which is a significant source of energy saving when considering the abundance of machines using rolling element bearings. The elastodynamics of bearing rings significantly affects the radial bearing clearance through increased roller loads and generated contact pressures. The flexible ring dynamics is shown to generate surface waviness through global elastic wave propagation, not hitherto taken into account in contact dynamics of rollers-to-raceways which are generally considered to be subjected to only localised Hertzian deflection. The elastodynamic behaviour reduces the elastohydrodynamic film thickness, affecting contact friction, wear, fatigue, vibration, noise and inefficiency.

Funding

EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Embedded Intelligence

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council

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History

School

  • Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering

Published in

Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part K: Journal of Multi-body Dynamics

Volume

234

Issue

4

Pages

707 - 722

Publisher

SAGE Publications

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Rights holder

© IMechE

Publisher statement

This is an Open Access Article. It is published by SAGE under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0). Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Acceptance date

2020-07-27

Publication date

2020-08-24

Copyright date

2020

ISSN

1464-4193

eISSN

2041-3068

Language

  • en

Depositor

Dr Ramin Rahmani. Deposit date: 16 November 2020

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