Angular Contact Ball Bearing Modeling with Different Types of Coatings

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to determine the stress distribution of uncoated and coated ball bearings by using finite element analysis. The coatings used in this study are titanium nitride (TiN), titanium carbide (TiC) and chromium nitride (CrN) with a thickness of 5 microns. A contact analysis has been performed on ball bearings to compare the performance between coated and uncoated ball bearings. Boundary loads of 5000 N is used for contact analysis. This study tries to establish a simple, two-dimensional expression for the elastic deformation with the inner ring and ball bearing as a angular or curvature model in terms of the geometry of the coating contact surfaces. The coating of ball and raceway surfaces is a requisite but difficult factor to be determined during design, so it is desirable for engineering to understand the effect of surface coating on the motion of ball and subsurface stresses in bearing. For contact analysis, the maximum contact pressure and maximum stress on the coating, inner ring and ball bearing have been used for comparison. The results of this study show that, among other coatings, TiC provides the best protection for the ball of the ball bearing. This is because the low Poisson's ratio of TiC in other coated ball bearings helps reduce the stress on the ball bearing, even though TiC has the lowest Young's modulus in the coating. When a lower boundary load is applied, high COF will also cause an abnormal increase in the maximum stress on the contact surface between the coated or uncoated ball and the inner ring of the ball bearing.