Determination of Optimum Hollowness for Hollow Cylindrical Rolling Element Bearing Available to Purchase

Hollow-cylindrical-roller bearings are intended for light load applications, including all types of grinding, machining, and milling spindles. They use hollow cylindrical rollers instead of solid rollers. These provide significant advantages over standard bearings, such as reduced vibration, low-radial runout, better radial stiffness, higher operating speeds, and lower operating temperatures. Investigators have proposed that under large normal loads a hollow element with a sufficiently thin wall thickness will deflect appreciably more than a solid element of the same size. An improvement in load distribution and thus load capacity may be realized, as well as contact stress is also reduced considerably by using a bearing with hollow rolling elements. Since for hollow rolling element no method is available for the calculation of contact stresses and deformation. The contact stresses in hollow members are often calculated by using the same equations and procedures as for solid specimens. This approach seems to be incorrect. Recently, the Finite Element Analysis (FEA) has been successfully used to evaluate contact problems for the roller bearings. Investigations have been made for hollow rollers in pure normal loading. Different hollowness percentages ranging from 0% and 30% to 80% have been analysed in FEA software to find the optimum percentage hollowness which gives minimum stress and finally longest fatigue life.