Contact Analysis of Frictional Motion between Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP) Races and Cylindrical Roller Bearing

The purpose of bearing is to constraint relative motion between moving parts to only desired motion. The design of the bearing provide for free linear movement of the moving part or for free rotation around a fixed axis or it may prevent a motion by controlling the vectors of normal forces that bear on the moving parts. Cylindrical roller bearing carry heavy radial loads. These are suited for low coefficient of friction and less frictional loss in high speed application. Due to this reason cylindrical bearing generates more noise. Optimization of noise depends on materials suited for bearing, design calculation of cylindrical bearing and radial force acting on it. Fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP), is a composite material made of a polymer matrix reinforced with fibers. The fibers are usually glass, carbon, or aramid, although other fibers such as paper or wood or asbestos have been sometimes used. Fibers play major role in self lubrication and noise reduction in cylindrical bearing. Optimization of contact pressure between FRP and cylindrical bearing is used for noise reduction. This works deals with design of cylindrical bearing based on radial force acting on bearing. Also estimate the life of cylindrical bearing. To evaluate the deflections and stresses developed on cylindrical bearing using different types of materials (i. e, Steel, HM Carbon/ Epoxy, HS Carbon/Epoxy) in FEA Analysis. The project also includes the determination of the influence of fiber and matrix material combinations, frictional coefficient and fiber ply orientation on the contact pressure distribution and contact area between the FRP and cylindrical bearings. Sliding contact between FRP and cylindrical bearing done using FEM software. Also, NX CAD software is used for designing of cylindrical bearing and Contact Analysis was done in Ansys11.0 software.