The performance of rolling bearings has a significant impact on the performance of mechanical systems. However, there are many factors that affect the fatigue life of rolling bearings, such as operating temperature, impact loads, reliability, materials, operating conditions, limiting speed, surface roughness, inclusions, indentations, lubrication, and so on.

Condition, radial clearance, deflection, fatigue crack-inducing stress, tangential friction, residual stress and circumferential stress, surface treatment, etc. These factors interact with one another, and combined with non-repetitive fatigue life testing, it remains difficult to accurately quantify the influencing factors.

The classical LP theory of rolling bearing fatigue life is based on the assumption that fatigue failure in rolling contact originates from the rolling contact itself. Orthogonal shear should be greatest in the contact area.

However, with the advancement of bearing manufacturing processes, surface-initiated fatigue failure modes have become more prevalent than subsurface fatigue failure modes. There are three mechanisms of crack initiation: cracks originating from the surface, cracks originating near the surface, and cracks originating in the material matrix.

Surface-initiated puncture life and subsurface-initiated spalling life are competing failure modes; they are predicted as functions of the film thickness ratio, the root mean square (RMS) value of the roughness peak slope, and the traction coefficient in boundary lubrication with rough contact. With the development of high-speed rail and the aviation industry, the demand for high bearing reliability is increasing, and temperature variations in bearing operating environments are significant. It is necessary to study the coupling between reliability and temperature.

Materials for rolling bearings are still under development. It is necessary to explore the relationship between component surface integrity and surface fatigue pitting. At the microscopic scale, the effects of surface integrity and lubrication on fatigue pitting have been elucidated.

On the other hand, it is important to study spalling failure by combining the load characteristics and dynamic response of materials, analyze the dynamic response of bearing materials to external loads, investigate the coupling relationship between fatigue performance and material properties, and establish the relationship between the dynamic response of materials and surface fatigue spalling.

Other factors affecting bearing fatigue life, such as lubricants and additives, surface roughness, circumferential stress, and interfacial slippage, require comprehensive research, including the development of databases and R software packages for the automated analysis of lubricants and bearing materials.

This is also one of the future directions for development.

Analyzing the factors influencing bearing rolling failure helps to better understand the mechanisms of bearing fatigue failure.

On the one hand, it can identify factors that reduce bearing life and those that enhance it; on the other hand, it can provide guidance for the development of fatigue life theories to improve the accuracy of bearing fatigue life predictions.