Effect of Waviness on Vibration and Acoustic Features of Rolling Element Bearing

Waviness of rolling element bearings, as one of the most concerned factors, would greatly influence the dynamic and acoustic performances of machines. In this paper, a new algorithm of vibro-acoustic coupling, which is based on the displacement mapping method by applying the displacement history obtained from a 6-DOF bearing dynamic model to be as the boundary condition of the finite element model of the bearing housing, is developed to predict the effect of waviness on the vibration and acoustic features of the bearing. The displacement excitation of the circumferential surface of bearing housing can be obtained by vector synthesis of bearing rigid displacement from the 6-DOF bearing dynamic model. This new method enables not only the reduction in computational cost, but also simulation of the bearing waviness under different sizes. A 6308 deep groove ball bearing model with outer race waviness is taken as an example case to examine the effectiveness of the new algorithm. The simulation results show that the new algorithm is able to predict the vibration and acoustic features of the bearing with waviness.