LAUSR

The vibration response of any system, especially at resonance, is strongly influenced by its damping characteristics. It is thus often strived to improve the damping properties of machineries to suppress the vibration level and its bad impacts, as soon as it is produced. This necessitates the development of adequate understanding of the mechanism of damping and identification of major factors affecting the same. The present study is aimed at investigating the effects of ball bearing geometrical parameters on the oil film damping at ball-raceway contacts of deep groove ball bearing. The effects of rolling element number density, ball-raceway conformities and diametral clearance, have been studied under a range of applied radial load. The simulation results reveal that the damping characteristics are strongly affected as the race conformities increase above 0.51. The number of rolling element has also significant role in determining the value of oil film damping, while the diametral clearance has only very small influence on it. It is also shown that the race conformity ratio can be a leading determiner of oil film damping, and it controls the in-operation performance and eventually, the life of the rolling element bearings.