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Prognostics Models For Railroad Tapered Roller Bearings With Spall Defects On Inner Or Outer Rings, Constantine Tarawneh, Jennifer Lima, Nancy De Los Santos, Robert Jones

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Rolling contact fatigue (RCF) is one of the major causes of failure in railroad bearings used in freight service. Subsurface inclusions resulting from impurities in the steel used to fabricate the bearings initiate subsurface fatigue cracks, which propagate upwards and cause spalling of the rolling surfaces. These spalls start small and propagate as continued operation induces additional crack formation and spalling. Studies have shown that the bearing temperature is not a good indicator of spall initiation. In many instances, the temperature of the bearing increases markedly only when the spall has spread across major portions of the raceway. In contrast, …