ABSTRACT
In many situations the contact area between rolling elements is curved. The examples are roller bearings and the railway wheel. For moderately curved contact area the methods of contact mechanics employing the half-space assumption for elasticity can be and are used to obtain some approximation of the exact solution - which is presently not available. For such cases an approximate method is proposed to calculate creep forces. It has been shown with some examples that the differences between this approach and one employing assumption of the flatness of the contact area may be significant as far as creep forces are concerned.
