Experimental Investigation of Residual Stresses after Heat Treatment and Grinding Processes in the Production of Ball Bearing Rings

Abstract

Experimental investigation of residual stresses after heat treatment and grinding processes in the production of ball bearing rings has been carried out. The residual stresses were measured by X-ray diffraction method utilizing chromium radiation, which has an average penetration depth of 5 μm incident on 100Cr6 (AISI-E52100) ball bearing steel. The process parameters of heat treatment and grinding processes were varied so as to represent the extreme values that can be applied in the respective processes. Hardness and percent retained austenite limit the heat treatment process parameters; while roundness, surface roughness and form the grinding process. Tensile surface residual stresses on the raceway of ball bearing rings changes to compression after grinding in both circumferential and axial directions. In grinding relatively higher compressive stresses were measured in axial direction compared to the circumferential direction. This experimental investigation also showed that the influence of heat treatment process parameters on the magnitude and distribution of residual stresses survived even after grinding process; i.e. heat treatment and grinding processes cannot be evaluated independently in process design for favourable residual stresses.

Modeling hydrogen diffusion in a tribological scenario: A failure analysis of a thrust bearing

“…The effect of exponentially-decaying residual stresses on hydrogen diffusion in rolling-contact did not show any significant influence on the maximum hydrogen concentration [16]. Several researchers have measured residual stress profiles in bearing components [28,29,30,31]. Recently, Gould et al [32] measured residual stress profiles in through-hardened AISI 52100 steel samples that were tested in a micro pitting rig to study the effect of microstructure on the formation of WEC.…”

Influence of Heat Treatment and Grinding Conditions on Surface Residual Stresses in the Production of Rollers

“…The other approach is purely experimental and requires process trials and experimental measurement of residual stresses. Heat treatment and grinding process parameters must be studied together to investigate the combined effect of these two processes on near surface residual stress distributions [6]. Depending on the experimental data, coefficients can then be defined to correlate the residual stresses with the coefficients, which can only be achieved after a wellstructured set of experiments and validation of the correlations.…”