Failure Analysis of a Cylindrical Roller Bearing Caused by Excessive Tightening Axial Force

Abstract

The premature failure of a cylindrical roller bearing took place during service, with a total operation time of 100 h. The failure cause was analyzed by macroscopic and microscopic observation, metallographic analysis, hardness testing, tightening axial force influence analysis, and test verification. The results show that failure modes of the bearing are contact fatigue spalling, wear, and fatigue fracture. The outer ring, inner ring, rollers, and cages all have suffered relatively heavy damage in the sides corresponding to the bearing side with laser marking. Excessive load, induced by the excessive tightening axial force, derived from the lock nut, is the cause of the bearing failure. The failure mechanism is that excessive tightening axial force caused a great deformation and cylindricity increase of the inner ring raceway, which induced high local contact stress between one side of the ring raceways, as well as the corresponding ends of the rollers, resulting in the bearing failure. At last, measures for prevention of this failure are put forward as follows: controlling the tightening axial force within the range of technical requirement, increasing the convexity of the inner ring raceway and rollers, and decreasing the grinding undercut size of the inner ring.