ELASTIC CAGE INSTABILITY IN ROLLING BEARINGS - SIMULATION AND TEST
Cage instabilities are known from literature for rigid body cages and they describe a whirling of the cage through the bearing with an other frequency than the rolling element set. In contrast to this stable cages are shifted due to gravity or centrifugal forces to a stable position for slow or fast running bearings respectively and tumble around this stable state. The contact between rolling elements and the cage may excite the cage from this position and if the excitation forces are large enough a cyclic excitation eventually occurs and the cage becomes instable. Main influence factors for the excitation of an instability are clearances and the load case of the bearing. As the excitation of the instability is in the cage pockets the most important influence is the friction there. The paper shows besides eexcitation mechanism and investigations of the cage stability depending on the load case and cage pocket friction also the noise generation if the elastic instability.