Vibration analysis of a single row angular contact ball bearing with the coupling errors including the surface roundness and waviness

Roundness and surface waviness are main manufacturing errors on the components of single row angular contact ball bearings (ACBBs). An analytical study for vibrations of the ACBBs with coupling errors including the roundness and waviness can be useful for the vibration control of the rotating machinery. However, most previous works only focused on the single error modelling method. In this paper, an improved time dependent displacement excitation (TDDE) model is proposed to consider the coupling errors including the roundness and waviness on the inner and outer races of an ACBB. The TDDE model for the roundness and waviness is established by using a combination of several sinusoidal functions. A dynamic model in the previous study is improved to consider the influences of coupling errors including the roundness and waviness. The Hertzian contact theory and Dowson’s method are adopted to calculate the bearing contact stiffness. The time- and frequency-domain vibrations for the experimental and simulation results are compared to show some model validation. The influences of roundness orders and waviness amplitudes on the vibrations of the ACBB are analysed. The obtained results show that the coupling errors including the roundness and waviness have some influence on the time-domain impulse waveform and frequency-domain spectrum characteristics of the bearing accelerations. The differences of the vibrations between the coupling errors and sing error are from 4% to 42%. This paper can provide a useful guidance for the accurate diagnosis of surface imperfections in the ACBBs.