Step-by-step simulation of wear of working surfaces in roller bearings

The purpose of this work was to develop effective methods for calculating the wear rate of raceways and roller bearings under dynamic loads. The wear of the working surfaces of rolling bearings in many practical cases is an important critical factor affecting their performance and durability. However, only a limited number of publications are devoted to this issue. In most of them, Archard's law, which has been experimentally confirmed during hydrodynamic friction of bearing steels, is used to calculate the wear rate of the contacting surfaces. Based on this law, the article presents a method of direct step-by-step calculation of the wear rate at variable contact loads and sliding speeds. In accordance with it, the change in the normal force, sliding speed and thickness of the oil film in contact is determined in the dynamic calculation of the bearing, and the finite element method is used to calculate the contact pressure field. The multi-mass model of bearing dynamics includes a contact friction model that allows adequately reproducing the conditions of hydrodynamic contact of solids. The direct calculation method involves a large number of calculations that make the impact of individual factors on the wear rate opaque. Therefore, along with it, a method for calculating the wear rate by averaged parameters is proposed. Using these two methods, the wear calculations of the raceway of the inner ring and the rollers of a double-row tapered roller bearing were performed. The comparison of the results confirms the acceptable accuracy of the calculation according to the averaged parameters.