CONTACT STRESS AND DEFORMATIONS IN ECCENTRICALLY LOADED THRUST BALL BEARING

Abstract

Contact stress and deformations in the thrust ball bearing with a contact angle of 90 ° are onsidered in this paper. Ideally, an external axial load of this kind of bearings should be centric, but in reality, this force may act eccentrically. As a result, the load distribution between balls is inequal. The most unfavourable case is when the axial force intersects the radius vector of one of the balls. The load, contact stress and contact deformation of this ball are greater than the load of all rest of the balls and greater in the case of equal load distribution. It limits the load-carrying capacity of a real bearing, compared to the theoretical static load rating. Analyzes have shown that considered thrust ball bearings do not lose operational ability at low speeds, even if there is some load eccentricity when an external axial load is not more than 30- 40% of static bearing capacity. Otherwise, additional bearing capacity analyzes are required.