1137 / 2023-03-13 14:33:09

The Life of Machine Components – The View from the Surface （Section Keynote）

CO2 footprint reduction of industry is pushing engineers to downsizing mechanical components, increasing the power density. This brings harsher operating conditions to tribological surfaces in components like gears and rolling bearings, which often are requested to operate under thinner lubricant films, higher speeds and temperatures and higher accelerations. Examples of this can be seen in electrical vehicle, aero and machine tool spindle applications. For all this, overdesign of mechanical components is no longer viable, the design cannot only be based on subsurface fatigue criteria. The design life of the surface becomes, very often, the important design criterion. However, with changing operating conditions, both surface and subsurface survival are critical. This talk will focus on describing critical failure modes of the surface of these components, ways of modelling them and the integration of these models in an overall criterion that considers also subsurface fatigue, effective in the modelling of the life of components with surface and subsurface survival. The application to rolling bearings and gears will be stressed.