The contact between balls and screw races or nut races is a kind of typical non-conformal contact and its characteristics will influence greatly on ball screw’s load capacity, transmission efficiency and positioning accuracy. Thus Hertz contact theory was adopted to construct the solution formula of ball screw’s contact stiffness, then ball screw’s contact characteristics in terms of axial load, design parameters and material properties were analyzed, and the contact deformation values of the contact between balls and screw races were obtained through finite element simulation method. The simulation results are close to the theoretic ones, which proves the correctness of the theoretic analyses. The present study offers theoretical support for the design and application of high speed, heavy load and precision ball screws.

ball screw; non-conformal contact, axial contact stiffness, finite element simulation

滚珠丝杠副中滚珠与丝杠滚道和螺母滚道的接触是一种典型的非协调性接触,这种接触的特性对滚珠丝杠副的承载能力、传动效率和定位精度等都有着重要的影响。为此,采用Hertz接触理论建立了滚珠丝杠副轴向接触刚度的求解公式,然后从滚珠丝杠副轴向负载、设计参数和材料属性等方面分析了滚珠丝杠副的接触特性,最后运用有限元分析软件ANSYS对滚珠与丝杠滚道的接触进行仿真,仿真结果与理论结果非常相近,从而验证了理论分析的正确性。研究结果为高速、重载和精密滚珠丝杠副的设计与使用提供了理论指导。

滚珠丝杠副, 非协调性接触, 轴向接触刚度, 有限元仿真