Vibration studies of lubricated textured point contacts of bearing steels due to surface topographies: Simulations and experiments

• Textured surfaces have been simulated using the fractal surface characterization method for forming the concentrated contacts with the lapped surface of the ball.
• The simulated vibration responses at the textured concentrated contacts are found reasonably in the good agreement with the experimental responses.
• Based on the parametric studies on the vibration responses of the textured contacts, it is observed that the contacts comprising of the surface having large size dimples and high dimple area density yield relatively large reductions in the vibration amplitudes at the resonance frequencies.

Vibration studies at the lubricated textured point contacts formed between bearing steels have been reported under the unidirectional sliding motion.The flat textured surface has been simulated using the fractal geometries. For vibration studies generic lubricated point contact is modeled as single degree of freedom system keeping together a non-linear spring and viscous damper in parallel in place of lubricating film. The stiffness of point contacts is computed using finite element analysis software. The damping is obtained experimentally through the acceleration response. Good matching between the simulated and experimental vibration results have been observed at the contact resonance frequencies. In presence of certain textures, vibration reduces due to the enhanced value of damping in comparison to the contacts having smooth surfaces.