Title: The influence of rolling bearing clearances on diagnostic signatures based on a numerical simulation and experimental evaluation

Authors: Ibrahim Rehab; Xiange Tian; Fengshou Gu; Andrew D. Ball

Addresses: School of Computing and Engineering, University of Huddersfield, UK ' School of Engineering, University of Portsmouth, UK ' School of Computing and Engineering, Centre for Efficiency and Performance Engineering, University of Huddersfield, Queensgate, Huddersfield, HD1 3DH, UK ' School of Computing and Engineering, University of Huddersfield, UK

Abstract: This paper presents investigations into the influences of bearing clearances on the diagnostic features of monitoring rolling-bearings. A nonlinear dynamic model of a deep groove ball bearing with five degrees of freedom is developed for numerical analysis under increased radial clearances which are due to not only the scenarios of bearing grades but also gradual wear with bearing service lifetime. The model incorporates local defects and clearance increments in order to gain the insight into the bearing dynamics under different fault cases along with clearance changes. Numerical results show that the vibrations at fault characteristic frequencies exhibit clear inconsistency with common understandings for different cases of increased clearances. This study highlights that it has to take into account the clearance effect, especially for the inner race fault, in order to avoid the under-estimate of fault sizes which may be indicated by the feature amplitude reduction.

Keywords: roller element bearing; nonlinear dynamic model; radial clearance; Hertzian contact deformation; condition monitoring.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHM.2018.090304

International Journal of Hydromechatronics, 2018 Vol.1 No.1, pp.16 - 46

Received: 01 Dec 2017
Accepted: 14 Dec 2017
Published online: 09 Mar 2018 *

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