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This article presents a brief overview of how the stress risk integrals of indented contacts are combined to calculate a rolling element bearing life and some experimental data concerning measured indentation. The possibility of predicting surface indentation and bearing life from normalized contamination standards is discussed.

Based on previous studies concerning pressure perturbations due to indents in dry and elastohydrodynamic lubrication contacts, this article presents the indented contact stress distribution and risk integral calculations. Different stress criteria are discussed and an equation predicting the risk integral is proposed.