Effects of Coating Material Characteristics on Rolling Bearing Contact Performance

A semi-analytical method was used to solve the coated contact problem. Surface contact pressure was solved by a numerical procedure based on conjugate gradient method. Surface elastic deformation and sub-surface contact stress were calculated using the influence coefficient derived from the analytical solutions. Discrete convolution and fast Fourier transform was used to promote calculation efficiency. The results show that thin coating cannot significantly change surface contact stress and eliminate roller bearings' edge effect. The substrate is the main load-carrying material; the location of the maximum Von-Mises stress is related to coated material, coating thickness and friction coefficient; the stiffer coating has large interfacial shear stress and tends to delamination and adhesion failure; as the coating thickness increases, the maximum interfacial shear stress firstly increases, and then decreases.