Patent Document ID: 20140026674
Application ID: 14009975
Patent Flag: 0

Claim One:
1. A method for determining a fatigue limit for rolling contact initiated fatigue of a rolling bearing, the method comprising: running a rolling bearing, having a plurality of rolling elements arranged between an outer and an inner ring, wherein the rolling bearing is exerted to a load which generates sub-surface transformations in a rolling element contact zone of the outer or inner ring, and identifying a set of sub-surface transformations in the contact zone along a raceway portion of the rolling bearing, and measuring, for each sub-surface transformation in the raceway portion, a position parameter value representative of sub-surface depth and a stress parameter value representative of contact stress in the contact zone, wherein the method further comprises: generating a data set of sub-surface transformations comprising the position parameter values in relation to the stress parameter values for each sub-surface transformation, and determining a fatigue parameter value representative of a predicted fatigue limit for the rolling bearing based on the generated data set of sub-surface transformations.