Effects of size and raceway hardness on the fatigue life of large rolling bearing

Although there are a large number of studies on large rolling bearings, analyses are seldom for the effects of size and raceway hardness on their fatigue life. In this study, taking the four contact-point ball bearings as an example, the fatigue lives of large rolling bearings with different structure sizes were calculated through the stress life (sigma-N), strain life (epsilon-N) and international standard (ISO) methods, respectively. The maximum contact force and subsurface stress in the raceway were obtained with the finite element method. At the same time, the effect of raceway hardening depth on bearing life was taken into account. Results showed that the effect of raceway hardening depth on the life of large rolling bearing was obvious. Thus, the raceway hardening depth cannot be ignored when calculating the fatigue life of large rolling bearing. When used with the load at the same level, the rolling bearing with larger size usually had less the fatigue life.