The Least Suspected Bearing Failure Mode

The Least Suspected Bearing Failure Mode By Cheryl Ramos When it comes to bearing failures, a number of common scenarios come to mind: poor lubrication, poor installation, contamination, overloading, and the list goes on. While overloading is often one of the first failure modes suspected, very rarely do we consider the complete opposite failure mode: under-loading. In fact, all bearings require some minimum amount of load to be applied to them in order to operate correctly, and not having enough load can lead to very quick and severe bearing failure. To understand how this can occur, we first need to understand the dynamics of a bearing. Consider a bearing with a radial load applied to it. There would only be a percentage of the rolling elements actually carrying the radial load at any one time. The portion of the bearing that carries the load is called the load zone, and the rest of the bearing would be the unloaded zone. Typically we expect to see radially loaded bearings with 120to 150 load zones. (See Figure 1.) The load zone gets bigger as more radial load is applied, and smaller as the radial load decreases.

Figure 1. Load zone of radially loaded bearing

Now consider the behaviour of the rolling elements themselves. Within the load zone, they are under full load, and as a result of the pressure between the inner ring and outer ring, they are forced to roll at full speed with the inner ring. Once the rolling elements leave the load zone, they are no longer under pressure and there is nothing necessarily forcing them to roll at full speed. As a result they tend to slow down as they travel around the unloaded part of the bearing. Upon reaching the load zone again, they must accelerate up to full speed. In bearings that are lightly loaded, the load zone is much smaller, and therefore the unloaded zone much larger. This means that there is more time for the rolling elements to slow down before they enter the load zone again, which in turn means that the required acceleration back into the load zone is much greater. This quick acceleration up to full speed can cause the rolling elements to skid on the raceways. (See Figure 2.) This is much like airplane landing gear, where the wheels are virtually at zero speed and must quickly accelerate to full speed upon contact with the ground. Because of this quick change in speed there
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The Least Suspected Bearing Failure Mode

is the tendency for the wheels to leave skid marks on the runway at the point where the airplane touches down. This is the same behaviour as in bearings, except that rolling elements skidding on the bearing raceways can have much more of a detrimental effect.

LOAD ZONE

Rolling elements are meant to roll. So when we have skidding or sliding rolling elements there is a lot of friction and heat Adhesive wear from rolling elements skidding on the generation, and often we get adhesive raceway upon re-entry into the load zone wear, also known as smearing. This is Figure 2. Outer ring raceway of a spherical roller bearing where metal is micro-welded from one component to another as a result of the sliding motion. As you can imagine, this causes a multitude of problems: extreme heat, degradation of lubricant, deformation of bearing components, and more heat. Often these types of failures will occur very quickly and snowball into a completely destroyed bearing. If you are lucky enough to catch this problem at an early stage through condition monitoring, you would likely see adhesive wear marks in the area just before the load zone. For those not as fortunate, the bearing could be completely blackened, and the rings, rollers and cage completely deformed, and often times shattered into pieces. At this point it would be difficult to pinpoint the exact mode of failure, but among your list of possibilities should be under-loading! In many applications there just isnt enough load. So how do we prevent this from occurring? If you are still in the design phase, or are able to tweak the design, then smaller bearings or ball bearings (as opposed to roller bearings) should be considered, as they tend to have lower load requirements. Certain bearings, like angular contact ball bearings and taper roller bearings, can be preloaded. Preloading bearings would ensure that the bearings always run with a set amount of load. Ensuring proper lubrication could help minimize the effect of the skidding, although it would not solve the issue altogether. Similarly, using hybrid or NoWear bearings, which have ceramic rolling elements or low friction ceramic coating on the contact surfaces, can also help to minimize the damage.

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The Least Suspected Bearing Failure Mode

Among the multitude of things to be considered when selecting and operating bearings, the effect of under-loading should be added to the list, as it is often the most overlooked failure mode even though its effects are most devastating.

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