Effect of Silicon Nitride Balls and Rollers on Rolling Bearing Life

Three decades have passed since the introduction of silicon nitride rollers and balls into conventional rolling-element bearings. For a given applied load, the contact (Hertz) stress in a hybrid bearing will be higher than an all-steel rolling-element bearing. The silicon nitride rolling-element life as well as the lives of the steel races were used to determine the resultant bearing life of both hybrid and all-steel bearings. Life factors were determined and reported for hybrid bearings. Under nominal operating speeds, the resultant calculated lives of the deep-groove, angular-contact, and cylindrical roller hybrid bearings with races made of post-1960 bearing steel increased by factors of 3.7, 3.2, and 5.5, respectively, from those calculated using the Lundberg-Palmgren equations. An all-steel bearing under the same load will have a longer life than the equivalent hybrid bearing under the same conditions. Under these conditions, hybrid bearings are predicted to have a lower fatigue life than all-steel bearings by 58 percent for deep-groove bearings, 41 percent for angular-contact bearings, and 28 percent for cylindrical roller bearings.