Steels for bearings

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Abstract

A casual metallurgist might be forgiven in believing that there are but a few basic types of steels used in the manufacture of some of the most technologically important engineering components, the rolling bearings. First the famous 1C–1.5Cr steel from which the majority of bearings are made. Its structure is apparently well-understood and the focus is on purity in order to avoid inclusions which initiate fatigue during rolling contact. Then there is the M50 steel and its variants, from which bearings which serve at slightly higher temperatures in aeroengines are manufactured, based on secondary-hardened martensite.

The casual metallurgist would be wrong; there is a richness in the subject which inspires deep study. There are phenomena which are little understood, apparently incommensurate observations, some significant developments and other areas where convincing conclusions are difficult to reach. The subject seemed ready for a critical assessment; hence, this review. The structure and properties of bearing steels prior to the point of service are first assessed and described in the context of steelmaking, manufacturing and engineering requirements. This is followed by a thorough critique of the damage mechanisms that operate during service and in accelerated tests.

Introduction

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a bearing “as a part of a machine that allows one part to rotate or move in contact with another part with as little friction as possible”. Additional functions include the transmission of loads and enabling the accurate location of components. A bearing may have to sustain severe static as well as cyclic loads while serving reliably in difficult environments. Steels are well-suited in this context, and in their many forms, represent the material of choice in the manufacture of bearings. There has been more than a century of work on alloys for rolling bearings; an elegant summary of the advances in steel and processing technologies that led to the contemporary state of affairs has been given by Zaretsky [1], [2]. And yet, a cursory glance at the literature reveals that the subject remains fascinating, with many unresolved issues, disparate observations and a need for radical innovations to deal with the modern requirements of large rotating components serving in somewhat unpredictable environments.

Bearings consist of rolling elements (balls, cylinders or barrel shapes) and rings which form the raceways. The manufacturing process for the rolling elements involves the high reduction-rate plastic deformation of raw, cast material, into billets with square sections. The deformation helps to break up the cast structure and to close porosity. The billets are then reduced in section by further rolling or drawing, heat-treated to a softened state and cut into lengths suitable for the manufacture of balls; the finished rolling elements are then quenched and tempered, or isothermally transformed, to the required hardness. Bearing rings can be made from seamless tube produced by hot-rolling and similarly hardened, followed by careful machining and grinding to the final dimensions and surface finish. The vast majority of rolling elements and raceways are made using steel.

This review is an exploration of the nature of bearing steels and their performance during service, based entirely on openly available published literature. The focus is on metallurgy but it has been necessary to cover aspects of engineering in order to present a coherent picture. I have attempted to cover the widest possible range of alloys but it is inevitable that the greatest attention is paid to those which are most versatile, most used and deeply researched.

It is worth emphasising at the outset that the demands made on any candidate bearing alloy go well beyond considerations of final structure and mechanical properties. The ability of the material to cope with each step in the sequence of manufacturing processes is seminal to its success or failure; a conservative list of the requirements is presented in Fig. 1. Of the very many alloys that have been investigated in the history of bearing steels, there are only two categories of steels which find application in the majority of bearings; those which are hardened throughout their sections into a martensitic or bainitic condition, and others which have soft cores but tenacious surface layers introduced using processes such as case or induction hardening. We shall see that within these categories, there is a just a handful of alloys which dominate the market for the simple reason that they best meet all of the manufacturing and engineering requirements. A great deal of the initial part of this section will focus on steels which are tempered or transformed at temperatures less than 300 °C and which contain low concentrations of substitutional solutes when compared with the specialised alloys which are described later. The latter include secondary-hardening steels for bearings designed to operate at elevated temperatures or others which are designed to resist corrosion.

The purpose of this section is not to give a comprehensive description of the vast variety of bearing geometries, but rather to establish the basic terminology which is used in experimental investigations. Much more detail including images of specific bearing configurations can be found elsewhere [4]. Aspects of geometry can dramatically influence the choice of material, bearing performance and its ability to bear loads. For example, the contact angle defined in Fig. 2 influences fatigue life and the temperatures developed during bearing operation [5].

Spherical balls enclosed between two concentric rings permit the rings to rotate relative to each other, whilst supporting a radial load; this is the essence of a ball bearing. Roller bearings use cylinders instead of balls and have a greater load bearing capacity because of the greater contact between the rolling element and the rings. Cylindrical roller bearings played a seminal role in the development of the continuous rolling mill, now used in the manufacture of billions of tonnes of wide-strip steel [6]. Prior to this, the rolling process was by repeatedly passing the steel through a single mill, involving many steps of handling and heating. The original bearing design had an outer forged steel ring and a fixed bronze-bearing race holding steel rollers in position. Modern bearings of this kind would be made entirely of steel although there may be retaining cages which are made from other materials. In spherical roller bearings, the rolling elements are barrel-shaped with two parallel raceways permitting angular contact; the double set permits the bearing to accommodate shaft misalignment.

Taper roller bearings take this concept further by making the rings and rollers tapered, to increase the contact area, permitting large radial and thrust loads. They are for this reason used in some helicopter transmissions to take advantage of their greater load capacity for a given shape or weight when compared with ball or cylindrical roller bearings [7].

In needle roller bearings, the cylinders are long and thin, so that the outer diameter of the bearing is not much greater than that of the inner ring. This makes for a compact design which can be an advantage when space is at a premium. A spherical-roller bearing uses barrelled cylinders as the rolling elements, with two sets of rollers enclosed by the rings. This allows the bearing to accommodate a misaligned load.

Some terminology needed to define directions, and which is used throughout this review, is defined in Fig. 2.

Section snippets

Lean steels: microstructure

Steels with carbon concentrations in the range 0.8–1.1 wt% and the total substitutional solute content less than 3 wt%, designed originally for machining tools, have historically dominated the mass market for bearings [9], [10]. They can be made martensitic by quenching in oil or salt, from a temperature where the material is mostly austenite; the martensite is then subjected to a low-temperature tempering in order to balance conflicting properties. Small bearings are usually through-hardened,

Impurities

The total concentration of an impurity, for example oxygen, does not necessarily determine the mechanical properties, but rather, how the impurity is distributed in the steel. Thus, there is a dependence of rolling contact fatigue life against the length of strings of inclusions [113]. There are nevertheless, correlations of fatigue performance against the total oxygen concentration [113], [114], [115] so it is valid to examine concentration as a parameter whilst bearing in mind that there will

Steels for surface modification

There are many processes that can be used to alter the properties of the steel at its surface. For example, 52100 steel can be laser treated to produce a surface hardness in excess of 1000 HV [105], [149], [150]. When the laser conditions are such that surface melting occurs, 52100 steel solidifies into a structure consisting of ledeburite eutectic, large quantities of retained austenite and martensite; this mixture is not considered to be optimum from the point of view of rolling contact

Tensile, compressive and bending strength

Steels such as 52100 steel when in a typically quenched and tempered condition are not particularly ductile; the elongation in tension is barely 1–2% so meaningful tensile test data are difficult to come by and hardness or bending strength is often reported instead. Hardness in the range 59–66 HRC has been shown to correlate positively with rolling contact fatigue life and greater hardness is associated with reduced wear in the bearing tracks [169]; this correlation of wear against hardness

Microcracking

It has been emphasised that the austenite grain size should be kept small enough to avoid the fracture of untempered, high-carbon martensite [226]; some examples of microcracks are illustrated in as a function of the austenite grain size in a high-carbon steel, Fig. 27. Microcracking of this kind has been reported for 52100 steel quenched after austenitisation at about 1100 °C [226]. Studies on carburised steel have shown that the cracks are known to adversely influence the fatigue properties

Spheroidise annealing

Steels supplied to the bearing manufacturer for making raceways are in the form of tubes or forgings whereas the rolling elements are made by cold-forging drawn, spheroidised-annealed wire. The aim of spheroidise annealing is to facilitate machining, and warm- and cold-forming operations, by inducing a microstructure which is a mixture of relatively coarse cementite particles and ferrite. The roughness of machined surfaces is also reduced in the process [239]. Reasonably large cementite

Special requirements

Aircraft engines represent one of the most sophisticated of engineering technologies; it is not surprising that they have led the development of some quite elaborate steels. Bearings on engine shafts have to tolerate vibratory stresses, bending moments and high rotation speeds, for example, 25,000 rpm, elevated temperatures and aggressive lubrication.

Corrosion resistant steels

Corrosion can play many roles in the operation of bearings. In ordinary bearings it may manifest locally when components are stationary for long periods, or through contamination of various sorts. Corrosion is a particular issue for naval aircraft engine bearings where corrosion rate of M50 is said to be unsatisfactory [296]. The consequences of corrosion reactions include the generation of hydrogen which penetrates the steel and does harm to its mechanical properties. The discussion of

Cryogenic conditions

Cryogenic bearings are used in the NASA space shuttle and Ariane rocket engines to pump liquid hydrogen fuel. The bearing raceways are made of steel, the rolling elements from silicon nitride, and the cage is made of PTFE impregnated glass fabric; the PTFE also provides some dry lubricant between the rolling elements and raceway [294]. The martensitic stainless steel 440C has in the past been used for the raceways because it is stainless and strong (Table 13). However, the toughness is

Powder metallurgical steels

Steels produced by a powder metallurgical route can be more richly alloyed than those which are cast, since chemical segregation cannot in the former case extend over distances larger than the powder size. Alloys produced by this more expensive method are usually chosen when a hardness greater than 60 HRC is required, and when the properties can be maintained at higher temperatures and loads. Abrasion resistance, operation in contaminated or corrosive environments, ability to resist shock

Melting and casting

Non-metallic inclusions are of particular importance in the context of steels for bearings. We shall see that refining and melting practice has to be adapted to deal with the so-called endogenous particles which are generated during the deoxidation process, and exogenous inclusions arising from slag entrapment, contamination from refractory materials and oxidation in air when the molten steel is poured without isolation from the environment.

Experiments using radioactive markers indicate that

Toughness

There is little doubt that when it comes to hardened, high-carbon steels containing proeutectoid carbides, the fracture toughness is determined by those particles either promoting void formation or initiating cleavage cracks. A large class of such alloys has more or less the same, relatively low level of toughness (≈20 MPa m1/2) once the hardness exceeds about 50 HRC, whereas for lower strength alloys the toughness increases sharply as the hardness (carbon concentration) is reduced [488].

Fatigue

Fatigue is intriguing because in well-designed structures it occurs slowly and leads eventually to failure at stresses much smaller than those associated with the breaking strength of the material. To paraphrase Wöhler [510], rupture may be caused by the repeated application of stresses, none of which equal the carrying strength [511].

Rolling contact fatigue

The fatigue life of bearings is determined primarily by three factors [563]: the detachment of material (spalling) following the initiation of cracks below the contact surface, spalling due to surface irregularities and due to distress caused by surface roughness or inadequate lubrication. Surface roughness is also related quantitatively to vibration levels [564]. We shall primarily be concerned in this review with the first two of these failure mechanisms and mostly with sub-surface initiated

Surface distress

Failures of high-speed bearings sometimes occur through a phenomenon known as surface distress. There are many mechanisms which result in this kind of damage. Particle-contaminated lubricants can cause raceway indentations, Fig. 86 [680]. The partial breakdown of lubricant films and the resulting contact at asperities leads to the formation of small cracks which develop into shallow craters. The damage due to such contact can be reduced if a minimal thickness of lubricant film is maintained to

Bearing life

It is useful to emphasise at the outset that full scale experiments which assess the life of a manufactured bearing are not precisely reproducible. Scatter is said to occur when the outcome is different even though an experiment is repeated without changing the control parameters [683]. Repeated rolling contact fatigue tests on bearings exhibit scatter because there are parameters which cannot in practise be reproduced. For example, the probability of finding inclusions in the volume of the

Residual stress

Residual stress is that which remains in a body after processing or use [700], [701]: it can be detrimental as it may reduce the tolerance of the material to an externally applied force, such as the load that a structure has to endure. In the context of rolling bearings, the stresses can be beneficial if they are compressive and localised at the surface so as to compensate for contact loads, Section 4. Alternatively, they can be detrimental to the manufacturing process in that they cause

Ultrasonics

Ultrasonic testing can have a major advantage in terms of the volume of material examined in order to characterise the dispersion of inclusions [750]. The inclusion size-range appropriate for this technique is illustrated in Fig. 95. The optical emission spectroscopy method is essentially a surface method because only a small volume of material is interrogated, Fig. 96 [751].

Retained austenite

Early tests on M2 high-speed steels (Table 1) revealed that the presence of retained austenite is detrimental to the fatigue performance of ball bearings, although the mechanism of this effect was not resolved [451]. An opposite effect is reported for the 52100 type steels, where the austenite enhances contact fatigue performance of steel balls [743], when a bearing operates in contaminated lubrication [32], [79], and in the context of carburised gear components [757].

There are suggestions

Microstructural damage

Steels in the 52100 category are partially austenitised and after quenching achieve a microstructure which is a mixture of undissolved cementite, untempered martensite and a small amount of retained austenite. The martensite is then tempered in the range 160–250 °C. The martensite plates are fine, approximately 0.2 μm in thickness and although they contain dislocations, electron diffraction patterns from the plates are reasonably sharp and distinct, Fig. 114. This initial microstructure changes

Creep

The term ‘creep’ is used here in a general sense where thermally activated deformation occurs as a function of time at stresses below the yield strength as measured in a tensile test. The observed strain is not necessarily associated with the diffusion of large atoms or dislocation climb. The process might be described better as relaxation.

Creep at low homologous temperatures is thermally activated and attributed to two possible mechanisms: (i) dislocation glide; (ii) time-dependent phase

Case-hardened bearings

The term ‘through hardening’ implies that the entire component is produced in the martensitic state. This may not be necessary in large components where the heavily loaded regions form a small fraction of the body of the material. Untempered high-carbon martensitic steels can achieve a maximum hardness of about 800 HV [223] but the dissolved carbon tends to make the martensite brittle. One solution is to use a low-carbon steel but to diffuse a larger concentration into the surface which is then

Wind turbine bearings

The radius of wind turbine blades has increased from 5 to 70 m over the past 25 years resulting in an increase in power output to about 10 MW [934]. The rotation rate of the blades is such as to keep the tip velocity below that of sound in air, so mills with large blades must rotate slowly. The slow turning motion of the blades is transmitted to a gearbox via a main shaft that is supported on large bearings, Fig. 139. The purpose of the gearbox is to increase the rotation rate of the shaft (25–35 

Critique

The purpose here is not to reflect conclusions or derived concepts which have been stated in context, but rather, to highlight a few of the interpretations which may be helpful in defining progress or in encouraging discussion:

  • 1.

    Hypereutectoid bearing steels are often supplied in a spheroidised condition. One method designed to reduce the cost of the spheroidising heat treatment is to generate divorced pearlite during cooling. There is no theory currently available to balance the competition

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Professor Lindsay Greer for the provision of laboratory facilities at the University of Cambridge, and to support from the World Class University Programme of the National Research Foundation of Korea, Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, project number R32-10147.

I am especially grateful to John Beswick for giving me access to his enormous library of literature on bearings, for addressing my occasional queries, and for thorough, constructive comments on a draft of

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