Theoretical and Experimental Study of Spindle Ball Bearing Nonlinear Stiffness

This paper concentrate on theoretical and experimental nonlinear stiffness study of milling machine tool spindle angle contact ball bearing in static mode. The theoretical study allows us to build an analytical model to define nonlinear stiffness of angle contact ball bearings based on geometrical and physical parameters. Ball’s deformation is considered in this study. Modifications were done on literature’s models having positives impacts on conformity of models to experimental results. FEM model using ANSYS is constructed to analyze the different parameters effect on nonlinear stiffness of ball bearing. Among those parameters are physical including the geometry, friction coefficient and the boundary conditions of the model and numerical parameters such as mesh density and penetration. Experimental tests were done on the spindle ball bearing 7014, to measure the rigidity. Universal tensile testing machine and crack opening gage is used to achieve load displacement curve. Experimental results here obtained compared to the theoretical model. The developed theoretical model, constructed finite element model and experimental results showed good conformity.