Effects of off-sized cylindrical rollers on the static load distribution in a cylinder roller bearing

There are always some differences in the diameters of the rolling elements that are less than manufacturing tolerance, which are known as off-sized defects. These diameter differences of the rolling elements assumed to be with identical size in the traditional bearing analysis affect the load performance of the bearing greatly and make the evaluation of the load distribution in the bearing difficult. In this study, a static model was developed to investigate the effects of diameter differences among cylindrical rollers on the load performance in a bearing. In the model, the diameter and order of each roller were defined arbitrarily. Contact judgments between all the rollers and the raceways were done constantly in the solution process, so that compatibility of deformation of the rollers and raceways need not be considered, which was different from other traditional methods. The effects of roller off size and its arrayed order in the bearing on the load distribution were analyzed. It was found that the effect of one off-sized roller on the load distribution was serious. Also, equal space or ordinal array of the multiple or full off-sized rollers was much better than random array. Furthermore, the relative diameter of the rollers determined the load distribution in the bearing. This article can help to further study the dynamic performance of the bearing with the off-sized cylindrical roller in the future.