This paper aims to investigate the dynamic characteristics of a loading stage with a rolling guide. In practice, the rolling guide is designed with different contact geometries to withstand various loads in service; it forms a rolling interface with contact stiffness varying with the applied loads. To model the rolling contact mode realistically, different contact modes were assumed at the interfaces between the ball and raceway and simulated by using spring elements with stiffness calculated by using the Hertzian contact theorem. The vibration characteristics of the rolling guide were determined by the proposed method and successfully verified by experimental vibration tests. As validation of the proposed method, a loading stage with rolling guides was also demonstrated to have different dynamic characteristics as various loads were applied, with the results from the experiments correlating to the finite element simulations.
