Numerical determination of the carrying capacity of rolling rotational connections

The exploitation of large axial bearings includes load peaks, which cause permanent deformation of the rolling contact. The plastic strain of the base material under the hardened rolling layer starts to grow and micro-cracks on the edge of the hardened layer and the peeling of this layer may occur. In our computation we have used an elasto-plastic model that combines isotropic and kinematic hardening and the growth of material damage. The damage model allows us to follow the variation of the elastic and plastic stress and deformation as a function of the number of cycles. In the article, an experimental verification of the described numerical model is shown, which can be used to determine the actual carrying capacity of the rolling contact for low-speed axial bearings.