Abstract
An automotive wheel bearing is one of the most important components to guarantee the service life of a passenger car. The endurance life of a bearing is affected by many parameters such as material properties, heat treatment, lubrication conditions, temperature, loading conditions, bearing geometry, internal clearance and so on. Generally, a tapered roller bearing gives longer endurance life than that of an equivalent size ball bearing. Consequently, the application of taper bearing units will be increased for more compact design and extended warranty. In this paper, we derive the relation between loads and deformations of a taper bearing unit. On the basis of that, we calculate the endurance life of the taper bearing unit considering initial axial clearance.
