Characterization of frictional hysteresis in ball-bearing guideways

This paper extends the notion of 'equivalent' dynamic quantities, namely stiffness and damping, which describe linear systems to rolling element systems, which exhibit hysteretic friction. The dependency of these quantities on design parameters of the guideway such as preload, ball size an groove angle is furthermore examined experimentally on two set-ups. The first set-up is built to specifically study the hysteretic friction behavior, while the second set-up uses a commercial guideway. This study shows further that a single quantity, the equivalent damping ratio at resonance, is able to characterize the dynamics of systems exhibiting hysteretic friction. The greatest part of this paper is therefore dedicated to the experimental correlation of this characteristic damping ratio to the design parameters of rolling element bearings.