Abstract:Ball screw pair is widely used in machinery, aerospace and nuclear industry, ete. due to its high precision and highreliability. In traditional ball screw pair life calculation method, fatigue pitting is adopted as the failure criterion. While under theultimate load eonditions such as the aerospace, ball serew pair is required to bear nearly rated statie load in a short time, the main failuremode becomes plastic deformation failure rather than fatigue pitting failure, the traditional fatigue life theory and calculation methodbased on fatigue pitting are no longer applicable. Based on the plastie contact deformation characteristies of the ball serew pair, theconcept and caleulation method of fatigue elastic life (FEL) of the ball screw pair were proposed. On the basis of the rigid test bench ofthe ball serew pair, the FEL test method was designed and tested. It is found that the error of the FEL caleulation method proposed inthis study is within 15%,The sensitivity analysis shows that the conformity factor has the greatest impact on the FEL of the ball scerewpair, followed by the contact angle, the lead, the axial load and the pitch diameter of the serew, and the ball diameter has the smallestimpact.