The Effect of Misalignment on the Fatigue Life of Tapered Roller Bearings

1972 ◽  
Vol 94 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Zantopulos

A comprehensive analytical and experimental study of the effect of misalignment on load distribution and fatigue life of tapered roller bearings is presented. Included are the effects of truncation of crowned rollers and edge of contact stresses. Bearing life tests, involving approximately 500 bearings, were run at various loads and misalignments to obtain sufficient test data to substantiate the analytical results.

Author(s):  
I Bercea ◽  
D Nélias ◽  
S Cretu

This study is focused on a bearing arrangement made of two tapered roller bearings and a shaft, supporting a combination of axial and radial loads. The paper is divided in two parts. This part presents first a numerical procedure to obtain the internal load distribution within tapered roller bearings. The internal load distribution is required to estimate the bearing fatigue life. Afterwards, a numerical method and the related algorithm for a load support system constituted of a shaft and two tapered roller bearings are described. The effect of the initial axial preload (or total axial compression) is taken into account. In consequence the method proposed can be used to select an adequate axial preload in order to increase the system survivability. An example of model implementation, i.e. application to the transfer shaft of an automobile automatic transaxle, is presented in Part 2 of the paper.


2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 947-960 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Keller ◽  
Yi Guo ◽  
Zhiwei Zhang ◽  
Doug Lucas

Abstract. In this paper, the planetary load-sharing behavior and fatigue life of different wind turbine gearboxes when subjected to rotor moments are examined. Two planetary bearing designs are compared – one design using cylindrical roller bearings with clearance and the other design using preloaded tapered roller bearings to support both the carrier and planet gears. Each design was developed and integrated into a 750 kW dynamometer tests, the loads on each planet bearing row were measured and compared to finite-element models. Bearing loads were not equally shared between the set of cylindrical roller bearings supporting the planets even in pure torque conditions, with one bearing supporting up to 46 % more load than expected. A significant improvement in planetary bearing load sharing was demonstrated in the gearbox with preloaded tapered roller bearings with maximum loads 20 % lower than the gearbox with cylindrical roller bearings. Bearing life was calculated with a representative duty cycle measured from field tests. The predicted fatigue life of the eight combined planet and carrier bearings for the gearbox with preloaded tapered roller bearings is 3.5 times greater than for the gearbox with cylindrical roller bearings. The influence of other factors, such as carrier and planet bearing clearance, gravity, and tangential pin position error, is also investigated. The combined effect of gravity and carrier bearing clearance was primarily responsible for unequal load sharing. Reducing carrier bearing clearance significantly improved load sharing, while reducing planet clearance did not. Normal tangential pin position error did not impact load sharing due to the floating sun design of this three-planet gearbox.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Keller ◽  
Yi Guo ◽  
Zhiwei Zhang ◽  
Doug Lucas

Abstract. In this paper, the planetary load-sharing behaviour and fatigue life of different wind turbine gearboxes when subjected to rotor moments are examined. Two planetary bearing designs are compared – one design using cylindrical roller bearings with clearance and the other design using preloaded tapered roller bearings to support both the carrier and planet gears. Each design was developed and integrated into a 750-kilowatt gearbox. In field-representative dynamometer tests, the loads on each planet bearing row were measured and compared to finite element models. A significant improvement in planetary bearing load sharing was demonstrated in the gearbox with preloaded tapered roller bearings with maximum loads 20 % lower than the gearbox with cylindrical roller bearings. Bearing life was calculated with a representative duty cycle measured from field tests. The predicted fatigue life of the eight-combined planet and carrier bearings for the gearbox with preloaded tapered roller bearings is 3.5 times greater than for the gearbox with cylindrical roller bearings. The influence of other factors such as carrier and planet bearing clearance, gravity, and tangential pin position error is also investigated. The combined effect of gravity and carrier bearing clearance was primarily responsible for unequal load sharing. Reducing carrier bearing clearance significantly improved load sharing, while reducing planet clearance did not. Normal tangential pin position error did not impact load sharing due to the floating sun design of this three-planet gearbox.


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