Title: An acoustic-structural model for pedestal-radiated noise during ball bearing angular acceleration

Authors: Wenbing Tu; Yimin Shao; Chris K. Mechefske

Addresses: State Key Laboratory of Mechanical Transmission, Chongqing University, No. 174, Sha-Zheng-Jie, Sha-Ping-Ba, Chongqing, 400030, China. ' State Key Laboratory of Mechanical Transmission, Chongqing University, No. 174, Sha-Zheng-Jie, Sha-Ping-Ba, Chongqing, 400030, China. ' Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, K7L 3N6, Canada

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to numerically investigate the noise characteristics of a pedestal during rolling element bearing angular acceleration while under radial load. A dynamic model was built for the calculation of excitation of the pedestal during angular acceleration, taking account of contact forces and friction forces between rolling elements and the races and skidding of rolling elements. The displacement of the outer race obtained from the dynamic model was then used in the pedestal finite element model and the vibration of the pedestal was obtained by performing transient dynamic analysis using ANSYS. The structural vibration acceleration of the pedestal was used as a boundary condition for the pedestal boundary element model and the sound pressure level was computed using LMS-SYSNOISE. Finally, the pedestal-radiated noise characteristics and how much the pedestal-radiated noise can be affected by design parameters, such as friction coefficient and radial load, was investigated. The proposed model and the results of the present paper could aid in the design of low-noise rolling element bearings and help solve the noise problem related to such bearings.

Keywords: rolling element bearings; ball bearings; acoustic-structural models; angular bearing acceleration; pedestal-radiated noise; dynamic modelling; radial loads; contact force; friction force; finite element method; FEM; structural vibration; pedestal vibration; boundary element method; BEM; sound pressure level; friction coefficient.

DOI: 10.1504/IJDE.2011.048116

International Journal of Design Engineering, 2011 Vol.4 No.4, pp.291 - 309

Published online: 30 Sep 2014 *

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