Determination of permissible contact stress of case hardened raceway of roller slewing bearing

The permissible contact stress for the rolling bearing made of the through hardened bearing steel has been established based on experience, while there is no definite value or calculating formula of the permissible contact stress for the slewing bearings which are hardened only on the raceway surface yet. To determine the permissible contact stress of the case hardened raceway of roller slewing bearing, finite element analysis for the contact elasto-plastic characteristics between the loaded roller and the case hardened raceway was performed, and the contact plastic deformations corresponding to different roller diameter, roller load, and case depth were obtained. The contact stress produced by the roller load was calculated by using Hertz contact theory. Based on the nonlinear regression analysis between the input parameters and the output plastic deformations of the model, the relation equation between the contact plastic deformation and the roller diameter, contact stress, case depth was established. The formula for calculating the permissible contact stress of the case hardened raceway was obtained according to the regression equation further. The permissible contact stresses calculated by using the obtained formula show that the permissible contact stress of the case hardened raceway depends mainly on the case depth. Loaded compression tests between the roller and the case hardened specimens were conducted to verify the validity of the established calculation method for the permissible contact stress of the case hardened raceway. Permissible contact stress decreases slightly with the increase of the roller diameter and increases with the increase of the case depth significantly. As the case depth reaches 6 mm, the maximum permissible contact stress is 3758 MPa. As the case depth reaches 7 mm, the maximum permissible contact stress of the case hardened raceway is 3889 MPa.