Relative fatigue life estimation of cylindrical hollow rollers in general pure rolling contact

Abstract

Solid and hollow cylindrical rollers in pure rolling contact have been mod-elled. The two rollers are subjected to a combined normal and tangential loading. The tangential loading is one-third of the normal loading value. The finite element package, ABAQUS, is used to study the stress distribution and the resulting deformations in the bodies of the rollers. Then the Ioannides–Harris fatigue life model for rolling bearings is applied on the ABAQUS numerical results to investigate the fatigue life of the solid and hollow rollers. Using the fatigue life of the solid rollers as the reference fatigue life, the relative fatigue lives of hollow rollers are determined. Four main different hollowness percentages are been studied: 20, 40, 60 and 80%. The hollowness percentage is the ratio of the diameter of the hole to the outer diameter of the cylinder. For each of those hollowness percentages, two cases are studied – when the two rollers in contact are hollow and when one hollow roller is in contact with a solid roller. This study includes two main models: Model 1, where the two cylindrical rollers in contact are of the same size, and Model 2, where the two rollers in contact are not of the same size. The estimated relative fatigue lives of hollow rollers showed a great improvement of the fatigue life compared with solid rollers under the same loading conditions. This was a result of the redistribution of stresses in the contact zone in the case of hollow rollers. Redistribution of stresses over a larger volume of the roller body decreased the peak stress and reduced the volume under risk. Increasing the hollowness percentage from 20 to 60% increased the flexibil-ity of the roller, and better stress distribution was achieved, which resulted in improving the fatigue life. Although 80% of hollowness rollers have more flexibility than 60% of hollowness rollers, the bending stresses (sb) on the inner surface of the rollers tend to decrease the fatigue life. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.