A new dynamic model for cylindrical roller bearings with flexible rollers and bearing sliding investigation

Cylindrical roller bearings are inevitably impacted by external moments or mounting error, which leads to uneven load distribution on the rollers and triggers deformation. Current methods are insufficient to simulate the deformation while ensuring solution accuracy. To address this, a new slicing approach is innovatively proposed in the paper, where springs are added between the neighboring slices to simulate the elastic deformation of the roller under external loads. Compared with the existing methods, the method presented in this paper has the best agreement with the finite element model. On this basis, a dynamic model for cylindrical roller bearing with roller deformation is further developed and verified experimentally. Finally, the sliding behavior inside the bearing under three typical conditions is investigated. A rich spectrum of frequencies emerges in the bearing contact load between the roller and raceway because of the roller deformation. These are all integer multiples of the roller passage frequency. An interesting phenomenon is observed that the sliding velocity is strongly influenced by the orbital speed of the roller compared to its rotational speed. The modeling and analysis in this paper provide new directions to the future work.