Preventing Rolling Element Bearing Failure by identifying their Main Failure Modes : A General Review

Rolling Element Bearings (REB) are often considered as key element in machineries as any kind of their failures may potentially lead to unplanned down-times. This is especially due to the fact that this "high tech" machine component constitutes "a strategic link" between machine elements that are in relative motion to each others, link through which loads, speeds, heat flows and many other physical manifestations have to flow through up to the machine bed of the equipment. Very usually working under many different timely variable, sometimes strongly heavy and rude, conditions (f.e. repeated shock loading, long terms usages without stops, heavily contaminated environments, ...) and, knowing that a complete standardized manufacturing program comprises usually more than 40000 potential combinations, drastically complexifies the task, not only, of Designer, but also of the Maintenance Team and/or of the Failure Analyst. Knowing their main failure modes by visually identifying their potential patterns helps those last specialists to better understand their main damaging mechanisms, to master their main influence parameters and, in such a way, to better prevent their failure at all these 3 levels. Marked by the industrially practice, the present talk intends to review the main REB's failure modes though a commented atlas of Typical damage cases. Patterns description and potential ruin mechanisms will be here detail explained with the main scope of preventing failure, of retarding their effects and of improving the overall efficiency of these machine components in a nowadays more and more needed energy saving policy.