Five-degrees-of-freedom model for static analysis of linear roller bearing subjected to external loading

This paper presents a novel five degrees-of-freedom model for the static analysis of linear roller bearings subjected to external loading. In this study, first, a rigid analytical model was developed to obtain the roller contact loads and displacements of carriage caused by the elastic deformation at the roller-carriage and roller-rail contacts. The non-Hertzian contact loads between the rollers and raceways were utilized to consider the profiled roller and/or profiled guide rail. Next, the structural deformations of the carriage owing to the contact loads were computed using the finite element method. The associated displacements of the carriage top were derived systematically. Then, the total displacements of the carriage top were obtained by summing the displacements estimated from the rigid model and the induced structural displacements obtained by finite element method. The proposed model was validated by comparing the calculated displacements of the carriage with those from a commercial program under various loading conditions. Further investigation regarding the effect of preload on displacements of the linear roller bearing was conducted. The simulation results showed the dependence of carriage rigidity and internal load distribution on the linear roller bearing characteristics.