Characteristics of high speed tapered roller bearing considering combined loads

Abstract

Tapered roller bearing (TRB), as a type of roller bearing, can provide the good ability of bearing larger combined load in the directions of radial and axial. It, therefore, has been extensively considered in many aspects of the industry, especially in the domain of rotary machine. And the characteristics of TRBs are highly influenced by different operation conditions. Based on the theory known as five degrees of freedom, this paper mainly evaluates the bearing in three aspects by solving the system of equations for bearing and rollers with the help of Newton-Raphson operation. Firstly, the bearing's displacements of radial and axial are studied when TRB is applied various conditions; then, the contact forces of roller-inner raceway and roller-outer raceway are calculated in the same term; and lastly, the stiffness of bearing is considered. Respect to the truth of non-Hertz contact when the rollers are contacted with inner and outer raceways, the forces of this line contact are calculated by a simple slicing technique. At the same time, it is mainly investigated the effects of three factors which are rotating speed, radial loads and axial loads on the performances of TRB. The computational results show that the displacements of TRB contact forces of roller-inner raceway and roller-outer raceway and stiffness in the direction of radial and axial are relatively sensitive to the rotating speed and combined loads. The proposed model and computational procedure are effective to estimate TRB's characteristics when TRB is subject to combined radial and axial loads. The method used in this paper can also be considered to guide the design and manufacturing of TRB in the practice.