Abstract
The bearing is one of the most basic machine elements and playing a very important role in various kinds of machines. Though it has been a very long time to make studies on the bearing and the theory of Hertz is used successfully to analyze the elasticity contact problem of the bearing, there are still many unsolved problems remained for it. Especially, it is still a difficult problem to analyze support rigidity and contact stresses of the bearing exactly in theory when deformation of the outer and inner rings, deformation of the housings, misalignment errors of the shafts, machining errors of the parts, crowning of the rollers and other factors are considered. In order to be able to solve some remained problems of the bearing, this paper tries to use finite element method (FEM) to analyze the contact rigidity and stresses of the rolling bearing. In this paper, a FEM model is presented firstly for elasticity contact analysis of the roller bearing. Then the commercial FEM software included in the SolidWorks Simulation is used to make contact analysis of the rolling bearing both in the cases of rollers with crowning and without crowning. Contact rigidity and stresses are both calculated by the FEM and the theory of Hertz. It is found that contact rigidities calculated by the two methods are agreement well with each other, but the contact stresses are not agreement well with each other.
