Development of Graphical Solution to Determine Optimum Hollowness of Hollow Cylindrical Roller Bearing Using Elastic Finite Element Analysis

Abstract

Technological progress creates increasingly arduous conditions for rolling mechanisms. Advances in many fields including gas turbine design, aeronautics, space and atomic power, involve extreme operating speeds, load, temperatures, environments which increases power and load on machinery and demand high strength to weight ratio of the rolling element bearings. Also bearing stiffness is an important parameter in the designing. Bearing design calculations require a good understanding of the Hertzian contact stress due to which high stress concentration is produced which greatly influence the fatigue life and dominate the upper speed limits as in the case of solid rolling elements. Since being originally introduced, cylindrical rolling element bearings have been significantly improved, in terms of their performance and working life. A major objective has been to decrease the Hertz contact stresses at the roller–raceway interfaces, because these are the most heavily stressed areas in a bearing. It has been shown that bearing life is inversely proportional to the stress raised to the ninth power (even higher). Whereas making the rollers hollow which are flexible enough reduces stress concentration and finally increase the fatigue life of bearing.