Rolling Contact Fatigue Life of Various Kinds of High-Hardness Steels and Influence of Material Factors on Rolling Contact Fatigue Life

The influence of material factors, such as types of steels, steelmaking process, cleanliness, fiber orientation, forging ratio, subzero treatment upon rolling contact fatigue life, was investigated for rolling bearing steels produced recently. Rolling contact fatigue life of recent steels which have high cleanliness has increased remarkably, and the influence of fiber orientation or subzero treatment upon rolling contact fatigue life is negligible, contrary to previous steels. Rolling contact fatigue life levels of each type of steels tested under three different test conditions were described. Depending on test conditions, their rolling contact fatigue strengths relative to others differed significantly in some cases.