Effect of the ring misalignment on the service characteristics of ball bearing and rotor system

As one of the most common errors in practical engineering, the ring misalignment has great influence on the service characteristics of ball bearing and rotor system. Based on the various contact angles and ball-raceway contact state determination, this paper presents an improved quasi-static model of ball bearing which has obvious advantages of the higher computational efficiency, wider application range and better convergence. On the basis, the effects of the ring misalignment on the stiffness and life characteristics for both the axially-loaded and combined-loaded ball bearings are discussed, then the change rules of the natural frequencies for the bearing-rotor systems with two different types of misalignment errors are comparatively analyzed. The results show that the ring angular misalignment can change the movement and force state of the balls inside ball bearing, thereby deteriorating (axially loaded ball bearing) or improving (combined loaded ball bearing) the service performance of ball bearing. Besides, the angular misalignment induced by the non-concentric housings of ball bearing has a greater impact on the dynamic characteristic of the rotor system. (c) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.