In the paper, the effects of the number of rolling elements and wave number of surface waviness on the nonlinear dynamic analysis of a rotor-bearing system has been studied. In the analytical formulation, the contacts between rolling elements and races are considered as nonlinear springs, whose stiffnesses are obtained by using Hertzian elastic contact deformation theory. The results are presented in the form of Fast Fourier Transformations (FFT) and Poincare´ maps, which show that the vibration characteristics of the rotor and its bearings change when the bearings operate in different regions of their nonlinear load deflection characteristics. The appearance of regions of periodic, sub-harmonic and chaotic behavior has been observed to be strongly dependent on number of rolling elements.