What are the Basic Performance Requirements for Bearing Materials?

1. High contact fatigue intensity

When the rolling body rolls between the raceways of the inner and outer rings, the contact part bears alternating loads. Many can reach tens of thousands of times per minute. Due to the action of the above alterNating load, fatigue crack sources are formed at the non-metallic inclusions on the surface or subsurface layer of the bearing parts, at the surface defects or the maximum Hertz stress area until fatigue peeling occurs, resulting in bearing failure. Contact fatigue failure is the main failure form of bearings.

2. Appropriate hardness

There is a direct relationship between hardness and contact fatigue strength, wear resistance, elastic limit and other properties, so hardness is one of the key indicators to evaluate bearing quality. Only by correctly formulating the hardness value of bearing parts according to the specific working conditions used by the bearing can the service life and reliability of the bearing be guaranteed. For bearings with high wear resistance and high rotation accuracy, hardness greater than 60HRC should be selected; for bearings with large impact loads, the hardness should be controlled at 58HRC~62HRC.

3. High wear resistance

When the rolling bearing works, in addition to rolling friction, it is also accompanied by a certain amount of sliding friction. The main parts of sliding friction are:

◆ Contact surface between the rolling body and the raceway

◆ Contact surface between the rolling body and the velocity

◆ The contact surface of the gear guide and sleeve guide edges

◆ The end surface of the roller and the contact surface of the sleeve.

When rolling bearings work, friction and wear between parts are inevitable. If the wear resistance of the bearing steel is poor, there will be early wear and tear, resulting in loss of bearing accuracy. The reporting increase reduces the service life of the bearing.

4. High elastic limit

When rolling bearings work, the contact area between the rolling body and the inner coat ring is very small, but the load is large. In order to prevent excessive plastic deformation under the action of high load, which destroys the accuracy of the bearing and produces surface cracks, steel for bearings is required to have a high elastic limit.

5. Good impact toughness and fracture toughness

Many bearings work under certain impact load conditions, so steel for bearings is required to have good impact toughness and fracture toughness to ensure that bearings will not be damaged due to impact loads.

6. Good dimensional stability

The precision of mechanical parts of rolling bearings is calculated in um. In the long-term storage and use process, its size should not and cannot be changed, so it is required that bearing steel should have good dimensional stability.

7. Certain anti-rust performance

There are many production processes and a long production cycle of rolling bearings. At the same time, finished bearings also need to be stored for a certain amount of time before use. Therefore, steel for the manufacture of bearings should have certain anti-rust performance to ensure that bearing parts do not rust during the production process and during bearing preservation.

8. Good cold and hot machining performance

Usually, bearing production processes go through multiple cold and hot machining processes. This requires that bearing steel should have good machinability, such as cold and hot molding properties and cutting properties. Heat treatment performance, grinding performance, etc. to meet the needs of large-scale, efficient and high-quality production.

The author of this article is Shaanxi Gainhui Heavy Industries Co., Ltd., which is a professional bearing manufacturer and distributor in China. The company supplies many types of the bearings, such as double row angular contact ball bearings, double row self aligning ball bearings, etc. With high quality and competitive bearing products, we sincerely provide services to customers all over the world.

Contact us for more details:

E-mail: emily@gainhui.com

Tel: +86-029-88692376

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