Abstract:

The contact problem between balls and wire races in the wire race ball bearing with a large diameter was treated as a non-conformal contact problem.The contact nonlinearity was investigated by employing the Hertz theory.The result reveals that the geometrical size has no obvious effect on the contact characteristics,while the geometric nonlinearity is contributed by the rigidity and tensile strength of the contact solids.The measurements of contact deformation for contact of both steel ball-steel wire race and Si3N4 ceramic ball-steel wire race were performed on an inductance micrometer dial MDS-LVDT.It is found that the analytical contact stiffness is slightly higher than the experimentalone,and the contact stiffness of hybrid contact is higher than that of the steel-steel contact.It is mainly attributed to two aspects. One is that the Coulomb friction is ignored in the basic Hertz’s assumption.The other one is that the plastic deformation often occurs following with elastic deformation.The theoretical and experimental results show that the material nonlinearity of the contact bodies has a significant influence on the contact problem.The present study offers theoretical support for the preload and engineering application of wire race ball bearings with large diameter.

Key words: wire race ball bearing, non-conformal contact, contact characteristic, contact stiffness, inductance micrometer dial

摘要：

将大型钢丝滚道球轴承中球-滚道之间的接触问题视为非协调性接触问题，采用Hertz理论分析了其非线性特性。理论分析结果表明,轴承组件的几何尺寸不影响接触特性，但其几何非线性依赖于材料的抗拉强度及硬度。采用螺旋电感测微仪对钢球-钢丝滚道和Si3N4陶瓷球-钢丝滚道两种接触方式进行了实验测试，通过对比发现，理论接触刚度均比实验测试值稍大，且相同条件下混合式的接触刚度比全钢式的接触刚度高，其主要原因是经典Hertz理论的假设忽略了库仑摩擦力的作用以及接触体弹性变形时往往伴随塑性变形的发生。理论和实验结果均表明接触体的材料非线性对接触问题影响显著。研究结果为大型钢丝滚道球轴承的预紧研究和工程应用提供了理论指导。

关键词: 钢丝滚道球轴承, 非协调性接触, 接触特性, 接触刚度, 电感测微仪