Abstract
The wheel bearing in vehicles has been improved to unit module by joining a bearing to a hub in order to achieve weight reduction and easy assembly. Currently, the contact force between a raceway and balls of a bearing is applied as the external force in order to analyse the structure of the unit type bearings. In this paper, simplified boundary conditions are discussed for structure analysis of wheel bearing unit. From the procedure, the contact conditions of balls and race in wheel bearing unit are considered as equivalent non-linear spring elements. The end node of a spring element is constrained in displacement. And the external force of boundary conditions is applied at the contact point between tire and road. For the evaluation of this analysis, its results for the force of spring elements are compared with contact forces of calculated results. and also maximum equivalent stresses of analysis are compared with results of test at the flange of inner ring. The analysis results with proposed boundary conditions are more accurate than results from analysis which is generally used.
