Rolling contact Bearings

Chapter 11
Applications
 Bearings

Rolling Contact Bearings – load is transferred through rolling

elements such as balls, straight and tapered cylinders and spherical rollers.
Load is transferred through elements in rolling contact rather than sliding
contact.

Journal (sleeve) Bearings – load is transferred through a thin film

of lubricant (oil).

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 Bearings are classified under two main
categories:
Plain or journal bearing : -
• In which the rotating shaft has a
sliding contact with the bearing
which is held stationary .
• Due to large contact area friction
between mating parts is high
requiring greater lubrication.
Rolling or anti-friction bearing : -
• Due to less contact area rolling
friction is much lesser than the
sliding friction , hence these
bearings are also known as
antifriction bearing.
 Design Considerations
Bearings are selected from catalogs, before referring to catalogs you should
know the followings:

• Bearing load – radial, thrust (axial) or both

• Bearing life and reliability

• Bearing speed (rpm)
• Space limitation
Bearing Construction
Major parts:
– Inner ring
– Outer ring
– Balls
– Cage or
separator
 Rolling Contact Bearings
1. Ball bearings

• Deep groove (Conrad) bearing

• Filling notch ball bearing or maximum capacity bearing
• Angular contact bearings (AC)
2. Roller bearings

• Cylindrical bearings
• Needle bearings
• Tapered bearings
• Spherical bearings

3. Thrust bearings

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Types of Ball Bearings
 Ball Bearings
1. Deep groove (Conrad) bearing

• Load capacity is limited by the number of balls

• Primarily designed to support radial loads, the thrust

capacity is about 70% of radial load capacity

Mechanical Engineering Dept. 9

 Ball Bearings
2. Filling notch or maximum capacity ball bearings
Bearings have the same basic radial construction as Conrad
type. However, a filling notch (loading groove) permits more
balls to be used.

Notch

• Radial load capacity is 20 – 40% higher than Conrad type

• Thrust load capacity drops to 20% (2 directions) of radial

load capacity.

Mechanical Engineering Dept. 11

 Filling notch
• Filling notch bearing have the capacity to
accommodate greater number of balls.
• However the thrust capacity is decreased,
because of the bumping of the alls against the
edge of the notch when thrust loads are
present.
 Ball Bearings
3. Angular contact bearings (AC)

The centerline of contact between the balls and the raceway is

at an angle to the plane perpendicular to the axis of rotation.

Extra support
in the back

Direction
of thrust

• Used for high radial and thrust load applications

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Ball Bearing Types
 Roller vs Ball Bearings
• Roller bearings carry a greater radial load than
ball bearings of same size because of greater
contact area.
• However they have the disadvantage of requiring
almost perfect geometry of raceways and rollers.
A slight misalignment will cause the rollers to
skew and get out of line.
• Straight roller bearings will not take thrust load.
Roller Bearing Types
Roller bearings
can support large
static and dynamic
(shock) loads than
ball bearings
because of their
line contact.

All roller bearings

can be split axially,
so assembly is
easier.
 Types of Roller Bearings
• Spherical roller thrust bearing is useful where
heavy loads and misalignment occur. Their
contact area increases as load is increased.
• Needle bearings are useful where radial space
is limited.
 Tapered roller bearings combine
the advantages of ball and
straight roller bearings, since
they take either radial or thrust
or both types of loads.

Designed to support large

thrust and radial loads.
Often used as wheel
bearings in cars and trucks.
 Tapered Bearings
Indirect and Direct mounting

Indirect mounting
provides greater rigidity
when pair of bearings is
closely spaced: front
wheel of a car, drums,
sheaves,..
Indirect mounting

Direct mounting
provides greater rigidity
when pair of bearings is
not closely spaced:
transmission, speed
reducers, rollers,..
Direct mounting
aa = effective bearing spread
Measure of the rigidity
of the bearing
mounting
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 Lubrication
• To provide a film of lubricant between the sliding and
rolling surfaces
• help distribute and dissipate heat
• prevent corrosion of the bearing surfaces
• protect the parts from the entrance of foreign matter
 Full film lubrication
• Oil film lubrication can be: hydrostatic,
hydrodynamic and elastohydrodynamic.
• Hydrostatic lubrication: refers to the
continuous supply of a flow of lubricant to the
sliding interface at some elevated hydrostatic
pressure.
• This requires a reservoir, a pump and
plumbing to distribute the lubricant.
 Hydrodynamic Lubrication
• relative velocity of the mating surfaces pump the
lubricant within the gap and separate the surfaces on
a dynamic film of liquid.
• Crank shaft bearing in IC engine. At rest, the shaft sits
in contact with the bottom of the bearing, as it
begins to rotate the shaft acts as a pump to pull the
film of oil.
 Elastohydrodynamic lubrication (EHD)
• is the phenomenon that occurs when a lubricant is introduced
between surfaces that are in pure rolling contact (roller
bearing).
• So bodies suffer elastic strains at the contact.
• lubricant is trapped between
two surfaces in rolling contact, a
tremendous increase in the
pressure within the lubricant
film occurs.
• But viscosity is exponentially
related to pressure, and so a
very large increase in viscosity
occurs in the lubricant that is
trapped between the surfaces.
 Lubricants
• Oil or grease may be employed as a lubricant.
The following rules may help in deciding
between them.
Preloading
Objective: to remove the internal clearance
usually found in bearings, to increase the
fatigue life, and to decrease the shaft slope
at the bearing.
• Preloading of straight roller bearings may
be obtained by:
– Mounting the bearing on a tapered shaft
or sleeve to expand the inner ring
– Using an interference fit for the outer ring
– Purchasing a bearing with the outer ring
Ball bearings are usually preloaded by the axial
load built in during assembly. preshrunk over the
rollers
 Sealing
• To exclude dirt and foreign matter and to retain the lubricant,
the bearing mountings must include a seal.
• The three principal methods of sealings are the felt seal, the
commercial seal, and the labyrinth seal.
 Sealing Methods
• Felt seals should be protected from dirt.
• The commercial seal is an assembly consisting of the rubbing
element and, generally, a spring backing, which are retained
in a sheet-metal jacket. Since they obtain the sealing action by
rubbing, they should not be used for high speeds.
• The labyrinth seal is especially effective for high-speed
installations and may be used with either oil or grease.
Mounting
 Bearing Failure
• Primarily contact stress.
• Failure caused by metal fatigue for properly
maintained bearings.
• Failure is considered to occur when either
raceway or balls exhibit first pit.
• Typically the raceway will fail first.
• The bearing will give audible indication that
pitting has begun by emitting noise and
vibration.
 Bearing Failure

Brinelling of surface Brinelling plus cracks

Brinelling is the permanent indentation of a hard surface.

Subsurface face fatigue crack that has progressed

to surface. Magnification 100X
Failure mode: Spalling
 Bearing Life: Individual Bearing
• The life measure of an individual bearing is
defined as the total number of revolutions until
the failure criterion is developed.
• The American Bearing Manufacturers Association
(ABMA) standard states that the first evidence of
fatigue should be the failure criterion.
• The fatigue criterion used by Timken Company is
the spalling of an area of 0.01 in2.
• The useful life may extend considerably beyond
this point.
Bearing Survival: Probability of Failure
• Any large sample of bearings will exhibit wide
variations in life among its members.
• The failures do not distribute statistically in a
symmetrical Gaussian manner, but rather in a
Weibull distribution, which is skewed (right).
 Rated Life
• L10 is the life at which 10 percent of bearings
have failed and 90% of them are still good.
Median Life
Recommended Life at Constant Speed
Bearing Life: Static Load Capacity

It usually takes a load of 8C 0 or larger to fracture a bearing.

Catalog load Rating
 Dynamic Load Rating C10
• Extensive testing by bearing manufacturers, has shown that
L10 fatigue life of bearings is given as:

Where P is the constant applied load, and C or C 10 is the basic dynamic load rating.
 Basic Dynamic Load Rating C10
• Desired life is usually much higher than 1
million revolutions.
• The load C10 that would be necessary to cause
failure at such a low life would be
unrealistically high.
• In fact some bearings will fail statically if
actually subjected to load C10. It is simply a
reference value
Bearing Survival: Reliability

  L / L10  0.02 1.483 

R  exp     
  4.439  
Load-Life-speed relation

 LD   n 60 
C10  FD    FD  D D

 LR   R nR 60 
 Combined Radial and Thrust Load
• A ball bearing is capable of resisting radial
loading and a thrust loading.
• If Fa and Fr are axial thrust and radial loads,
then Fe is equivalent radial load that does the
same damage as the combined radial and
thrust loads together.
 Rotation Factor V
• A rotation factor V is defined such that
• V=1 when the inner ring rotates and
• V=1.2 when the outer ring rotates.
• Factor 1.2 for outer-ring rotation is simply an
acknowledgement that the fatigue life is
reduced under these conditions.
• Self-aligning bearings are an exception, they
have V=1 for rotation of either ring.
 Axial and Radial Load relations
• Two dimensionless
groups can be formed Segment 1
Fe/(V.Fr) and Fa/(VFr). Segment 2
• Plotted data fall in a
gentle curve that is
well approximated by
two straight line
segments.
 Combined load
The equations of the two lines are:

These equations are combined as:

 Equivalent radial load factors
• The X and Y factors in depend upon the geometry of the
bearing, including the number of balls and the ball diameter.
• Since straight or cylindrical roller bearings will take no axial
load, or very little, the Y factor is always zero.
 ABMA Standard Dimensions
• The ABMA has established standard boundary
dimensions for bearings, which define the bearing
bore, the outside diameter (OD), the width, and the
fillet sizes on the shaft and housing shoulders.
• The plan is quite flexible in that, for a given bore, there
is an assortment of widths and outside diameters.
• Furthermore, the outside diameters selected are such
that, for a particular outside diameter, one can usually
find a variety of bearings having different bores and
widths.
 ABMA Plan
• In ABMA plan the bearings are identified by a
two-digit number called the dimension-series
code.
• The first number in the code is from the width
series, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. The second number is
from the diameter series(outside), 8, 9, 0, 1, 2, 3,
and 4.
• Since the dimension-series code does not reveal
the dimensions directly, it is necessary to resort
to tabulations.
 ABMA notation
Figure shows the variety of bearings that may be obtained with a particular bore.