Investigation of wear degradation of railway spherical roller bearings

A predictive dynamic model is developed to investigate the wear profile of a railway axle bearing (radially loaded spherical roller bearing), under various loading and friction scenarios. The wear and degradation of railway axle bearings is an important issue for rolling stock maintenance due to the large numbers of bearings in a fleet and the intensive labour required for overhaul/replacement. FE modelling of spherical roller bearings is also performed to validate the efficient models, as well as to reveal further detailed information of the contact interactions between the rollers and the raceways. The results highlight a three zoned wear profile showing increasing bearing wear with increasing load and friction conditions.