Rolling-element bearing

A rolling-element bearing is a bearing which carries a load by placing round elements between the two pieces. The relative motion of the pieces causes the round elements to roll (tumble) with little sliding.

One of the earliest and best-known rolling-element bearings are sets of logs laid on the ground with a large stone block on top. As the stone is pulled, the logs roll along the ground with little sliding friction. As each log comes out the back, it is moved to the front where the block then rolls on to it. You can imitate such a bearing by placing several pens or pencils on a table and placing your hand on top of them. See "bearings" for more on the historical development of bearings.

A rolling-element rotary bearing uses a shaft in a much larger hole, and cylinders called "rollers" tightly fill the space between the shaft and hole. As the shaft turns, each roller acts as the logs in the above example. However, since the bearing is round, the rollers never fall out from under the load.

Rolling-element bearings have the advantage of a good tradeoff between cost, size, weight, carrying capacity, durability, accuracy, friction, and so on. Other bearing designs are often better on one specific attribute, but worse in most other attributes, although fluid bearings can sometimes simultaneously outperform on carrying capacity, durability, accuracy, friction, rotation rate and sometimes cost. Only plain bearings have as wide use as rolling-element bearings.



Design

Typical rolling-element bearings range in size from 10 mm diameter to a few metres diameter, and have load-carrying capacity from a few tens of grams to many thousands of tonnes.

A particularly common kind of rolling-element bearing is the ball bearing. The bearing has inner and outer races and a set of balls. Each race is a ring with a groove where the balls rest. The groove is usually shaped so the ball is a slightly loose fit in the groove. Thus, in principle, the ball contacts each race at a single point. However, a load on an infinitely small point would cause infinitely high contact pressure. In practice, the ball deforms (flattens) slightly where it contacts each race, much as a tire flattens where it touches the road. The race also dents slightly where each ball presses on it. Thus, the contact between ball and race is of finite size and has finite pressure. Note also that the deformed ball and race do not roll entirely smoothly because different parts of the ball are moving at different speeds as it rolls. Thus, there are opposing forces and sliding motions at each ball/race contact. Overall, these cause bearing drag.

Most rolling element bearings use cages to keep the balls separate. This reduces wear and friction, since it avoids the balls rubbing against each other as they roll, and precludes them from jamming. Caged roller bearings were invented by John Harrison in the mid 1700s as part of his work on chronographs.