Rolling Contact Fatigue Performance of Vibro-Mechanical Textured Surfaces

The rolling contact fatigue (RCF) performance of vibro-mechanical textured surfaces in a point elastohydrodynamic lubrication (EHL) condition is investigated. Two dimple designs, small (100 μ m × 100 μ m) and large (240 μ m × 100 μ m), are compared with a nontextured sample. Experimental RCF tests show that the textured surfaces exhibit a significantly reduced number of cycles to failure compared with the nontextured sample for the high load, pure rolling conditions evaluated. In order to understand these results, numerical models are used to calculate the lubrication and contact pressure conditions and the subsurface stress distribution. The fatigue failure trends observed experimentally are compared with the simulation results with good agreement. It is determined that RCF performance is related to the presence and size of the generated dimple.