Effect of angular misalignment of inner ring on the contact characteristics and stiffness coefficients of duplex angular contact ball bearings

Ring misalignment is unavoidable in most applications of bearing and significantly affects bearing performance. However, it has not been thoroughly studied for duplex angular contact ball bearings. To overcome the deficiency, this paper presents the analysis for duplex angular contact ball bearings by considering inner ring angular misalignment. A highly modular five degree-of-freedom model of duplex angular contact ball bearings is proposed based on vector-and-matrix method for back-to-back, face-to-face and tandem configurations. Five-dimensional stiffness matrix of bearing is also presented. On the basis, influences of ring misalignment on load distribution, maximum and average contact loads of bearing with back-to-back and face-to-face configurations are analyzed. Finally, translation and tilting stiffness coefficients of bearing are further discussed under misalignment condition. The results show that, ring misalignment considerable changes the contact characteristic of ball-raceway and causes uneven load distribution. Ring misalignment affects the position of maximum contact load and significantly impacts the diagonal stiffness of bearing. Contact characteristics and stiffness are also dependent on the bearing configuration. The results suggest the importance of bearing alignment and demonstrate the necessity of misalignment effect analysis. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

This paper presents a detailed analysis of duplex angular contact ball bearings with inner ring angular misalignment, showing that misalignment significantly changes the contact characteristics and load distribution of the bearing, impacting the diagonal stiffness as well.