Contact Fatigue Analysis of a Dented Surface in a Dry Elastic–Plastic Circular Point Contact

Abstract

The present article proposes a methodology for the computational analysis of damage induced in the vicinity of dents in a dry circular point contact under repeated rolling. The failure risk is evaluated through the use of the Dang Van multiaxial fatigue criterion. The dent is a typical surface defect encountered in rolling element bearings when operating in contaminated environments. It is usually created by a solid particle not removed by seals or filters when passing through an EHL conjunction. Since local plasticity occurs when the debris is first entrapped between the contacting surfaces, and later when the resulting dents are subjected to moving contact load, the elastic-plastic behavior of the material should be captured by the model. First, the dent shape and the subsurface stress and strain fields produced by the presence of a spherical particle are obtained by the finite element method. Second, the rolling of the load over the surface defect is simulated using a semi-analytical elastic-plastic code. The simulations are carried out for two different debris materials, both ductile but one significantly softer than the contacting surfaces, i.e., made of stainless steel 316L, the other one being made of bearing steel AISI 52100 similar to the contacting surfaces. The dent shape and initial stress and strain states are first presented. Subsequent stress and strain states after a few rolling cycles are then presented. Finally the effects of the coefficient of friction, presence of residual stress, and contact load magnitude are highlighted.

An experimentally validated numerical model of indentation and abrasion by debris particles in machine-element contacts considering micro-hardness effects

“…This has been shown in several experimental studies 23,[31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46]51 and theoretical studies. 86,89,91,96,[105][106][107][108][109][110][111] For example, Ai and Nixon 110 found that the fatigue life is strongly influenced by the indentation area density and dent slope, particularly for slopes over 5 . The effect of a dent's slope on fatigue life of the dented surface has also been shown by Lubrecht et al, 111 who found that the reduction of life is proportional to the depth of the dent and inversely proportional to its wavelength in line contacts.…”

Contact analysis in presence of spherical inhomogeneities within a half-space

“…The contact solver may be also coupled with FEM to account for the flexibility of the structure and used as a structural zoom when a finer mesh is needed for the contact . The method has since been developed and improved in several ways by the group of Nélias at INSA-Lyon Gallego et al, 2006Gallego and Nélias, 2007;Antaluca and Nélias, 2008) and the group of Wang and Keer at Northwestern University Liu et al, 2007;Chen et al, 2008aChen et al, ,b, 2007Wang, 2008, 2009;Wang et al, 2009) to account for various plasticity models and tangential effects including running-in and fretting wear. One interesting improvement is due to Zhou et al (2009) who utilized a combination of three-dimensional and two-dimensional fast Fourier transform algorithms to decrease both the memory space allocated and the computing time.…”

Effect of solid particles on gear tooth failure

“…In this investigation, a criterion was presented in order to evaluate the possibility of particles entrapment. ANTALUCA and NELIAS [22] studied the contact fatigue around dents in a dry circular point contact under repeated rolling. They proposed a new methodology of analysis using the Dang Van multi-axial fatigue criterion to evaluate the damage risk.…”