A study on the sound of roller bearings operating under radial load

The purpose of the paper is to numerically investigate the sound characteristics of roller bearings operating under radial load. For the sake of simplifying the analysis, it was assumed that the roller bearings are infinitely long, a noise source due to pressure fluctuation of oil film is taken as a line noise source, and acoustic energy losses in the bearing are neglected. To obtain sound characteristics of the bearing, the rolling contact load and the sound pressure level distributions were calculated for various operating conditions, and the results were compared with each other. How much the bearing noise can be affected by the design parameters, such as radial clearance of the bearing, viscosity of lubricant, and the number of rollers was also investigated. The results and discussions of the present paper could aid in the design of low-noise roller bearings and to solve the noise problems related to such bearings.