A New Quasi-Static Cylindrical Roller Bearing Model to Accurately Consider Non-Hertzian Contact Pressure in Time Domain Simulations

The accuracy of the fatigue life calculations in rolling bearing simulations is highly dependent on the precision of the roller-raceway contact simulations. Several different methods exist to simulate these pressure distributions and in time domain bearing simulations, where many contacts need evaluation, the simple and time efficient methods are more popular, yielding erroneous life estimates. This paper presents a new six degree of freedom frictionless quasi-static time domain cylindrical roller bearing model that uses high precision elastic half-space theory to simulate the contact pressures. The potentially higher computational demand using the advanced contact calculations is addressed by preprocessing a series of contacts at different centerline approaches and roller tilt angles, which are used for interpolating contact results during time domain simulations. It is demonstrated that this new model allows for simulation of bearing misalignments, roller centrifugal forces, and flange contact induced roller tilt moments, and that the effect of these conditions is directly evaluated in a detailed fatigue life analysis. Finally, the stiffness of the bearing model is validated against existing experimental data with good correlation.