Mixed Lubrication Analysis of Tapered Roller Bearings and Crowning Profile Optimization Based on Numerical Running-In Method

Tapered roller bearings (TRBs) are widely used in heavy-load rotating machinery. One of the technical problems in TRBs is the existence of sharp spikes of the contact pressure in the vicinity of the two ends of the tapered rollers. To suppress the pressure spikes at the roller ends, a straight roller profile is crowned in cylindrical and tapered roller bearings. However, compared to cylindrical roller bearings, there are few studies on the profile modification of TRBs in the literature, and most of the publications on the EHD analysis of tapered rollers focused on a single roller, using traditional profiles such as logarithmic profiles, dub-off profiles and chamfer profiles. By using the numerical running-in method proposed and used in crowning profiles of cylindrical rollers by the authors, this paper provides the first ever asymmetric optimized profile solution for all TRBs rather than for just a single roller. The results show that the optimized profile has the best performance in smoothing contact pressure distribution in the axial direction compared with the conventional logarithmic profile and is a useful profile form with respect to the elimination of sharp pressure spikes. In addition, considering the effect of temperature and mixed lubrication, this paper analyzes the influences of different axial profiles under radial load (Fr), rotation speed (N) and standard deviation of roughness (Rq) conditions.