Nonlinear excitation model of ball bearing waviness in a rigid rotor supported by two or more ball bearings considering five degrees of freedom

This research presents a nonlinear model to analyze the ball bearing vibration due to the waviness in a rigid rotor supported by two or more ball bearings. The waviness of a ball and each races is modeled by the superposition of sinusoidal function, and the position vectors of inner and outer groove radius center are defined with respect to the mass center of the rotor in order to consider five degrees of freedom of a general rotor-bearing system. The waviness of a ball bearing is introduced to these position vectors to use the Hertzian contact theory in order to calculate the elastic deflection and nonlinear contact force resulting from the waviness while the rotor has translational and angular motion. They can be determined by solving the nonlinear equations of motion with five degrees of freedom by using the Runge-Kutta-Fehlberg algorithm. Numerical results of this research are validated with those of prior researchers. The proposed model can calculate the translational displacement as well as the angular displacement of the rotor supported by two or more ball bearings with waviness. It also characterizes the vibration frequencies resulting from the various kinds of waviness in rolling elements, the harmonic frequencies resulting from the nonlinear load-deflection characteristics of ball bearing, and the sideband frequencies resulting from nonlinearity of the waviness interaction. @DOI: 10.1115/1.1398289#