Detection methods and bearing failure characteristics analysis related to grinding burns

Abstract

Grinding burn is one of the bearing failure causes for components. In order to quickly confirm that grinding burn is the cause of bearing failure, detection methods for the grinding burns and characteristics of bearing failure caused by grinding burns have been studied in this paper. The results show that cold acid pickling examination, microhardness test and Barkhausen noise analysis can be used in the detection of heavy grinding burns but have several disadvantages to hinder their application on the detection of slight grinding burns. A grinding burn detection procedure is recommended for the analysis of bearing failure induced by grinding burn. It has been found that the modes of bearing failure induced by grinding burns were contact fatigue spalling developed from the contact fatigue crack, the propagation mechanism of the contact fatigue crack was obtained. And the unique phenomenon of fracture or fragmentation with cracks distributed in the origin or surrounding the spalling pit of the grinding burn layer was also obtained. Based on the above results the future work on detection methods and influence on bearing failure mechanism and life of grinding burn are proposed.