Experimental study of rolling contact fatigue life of zirconia ceramic ball

摘要

A newly developed pure rolling fatigue test rig with three contact points for bearing balls was used to perform rolling contact fatigue (RCF) tests and the fatigue properties of two kinds of zirconia ceramic balls produced with different materials composition and identical technologies were compared. Ball surfaces were examined after failure with optical microscopy and scanning electron microscopy. It was identified by tests that the failure mode of zirconia ceramic balls was surface spall. Life tests data, summarized in accordance with the Weibull theory, showed that the life of two kinds of zirconia balls was close, and no remarkable difference in the divergence between the tested two kinds of balls was found.