Research on Non-Circular Raceway of Single-Row Four-Point Contact Ball Bearing Based on Life Optimization

The traditional slewing bearing with circular raceway has the problem of stress concentration under the large overturning moment. In this paper, a new non-circular raceway of a slewing ball bearing was presented to conquer this problem. To obtain the new non-circular raceway, first, the static equilibrium equations of the slewing ball bearing was established by the vector method, which is a constraint condition for life optimization; secondly, the life optimization function was established to calculate the contact load distribution in the bearing when the bearing life is at its maximum; finally, through the contact deformation with the contact load, the non-circular inner raceway corresponding to the maximum bearing life was obtained, and the non-circular shape corresponding to the raceway under axial load and overturning moment was studied. The results show that the non-circular raceway devised by this method can evenly reduce the contact force of the raceway and effectively improve the bearing capacity. Moreover, the position where the non-circular raceway deformation occurs is the position where the contact force is different before and after optimization. Therefore, the overturning moment has an effect on the shape of the raceway, whereas the axial load only affects the amplitude of the deformation, and has no obvious effect on the shape of the raceway.