Artificial Indents as the Root Cause of Rolling Contact Fatigue Damage: Effect of Plastic Properties Available to Purchase

Surface-initiated rolling contact fatigue (RCF) can be triggered by dents formed due to contamination particles on raceways. To mimic this failure in this study, the surface of a steel was indented and tested in an RCF setup. This experimental technique is used to study the RCF performance of different bearing steels in contaminated conditions. The experimental results were interpreted by finite element simulations to account for the cyclic plasticity behavior. A correlation was found between the RCF results and the rate of the indent shoulder height reduction, which is itself related to the Bauschinger effect. A screening test based on cyclic Vickers indentation is proposed to rank steels in terms of their ability to reduce shoulders.