Stresses at Roller-Rib Contacts in Cylindrical Roller Bearings

Accurately calculating contact stresses is important during the design, analysis, and optimisation of drivetrains. CAE tools used for these tasks must be able to give accurate results in a short timescale to facilitate an iterative design process.

Within a drivetrain, roller bearings operating under typical conditions can experience large stresses at the roller-rib contact. Additionally, the stress distribution can be used to calculate frictional forces and power losses, and so an accurate understanding of the stresses at these contacts can help inform system level design. However, the geometry of the roller and rib surfaces is complex; this can easily lead to a stress distribution which is non-Hertzian, making stresses difficult to analytically predict.