Hi electricpete
Thanks for the interesting link.
Right, have looked at the link its quite heavy reading, in fact some of it goes right over my head, I would agree that the bearing may take off some of the bending stress at the winding side of shaft, but I doubt it would take it all off, if it did then the shaft from the drive bearing outwards could be treated as a cantilever beam and the shear force and bending moment would stop at the drive bearing. In addition whatever stress is in the shaft at the winding side, it is magnified by the stress concentration factor, this also should include the rotor mass which has been omitted from my simple calculation.
Now in truth the majority of motor failures are due to the drive end bearing failing for one reason or another,I saw a pi chart for motor failures and I think 51% was drive bearing failure and about 2% shaft/coupling failures.
The design methods we use however are a simplification and truthfully the shaft is supported by bearings which are neither simple supports nor "built in" so its not easy to be 100% sure exactly where the maximum stress is, we can only approximate and I think the simple supported model is the best as you have indicated.
Just going back to the rigidity of the bearing I would also go along with T.moose's statement regarding excessive bending of the shaft to take up all the bearing clearance without knowing about it fairly soon, because just looking at figure2 on page13, the inner to outer race angular misalignment (dependant on load) can be about 1/6 to 1/2 a degree which when taken to the end of the motor shaft would be quite a deflection from the horizontal. Also looking at fig4 on page 14, for a small angular misalignment in the range above,it would generate a large moment in the bearing which I feel wouldn't go unseen.
this link posted earlier shows critical areas for shaft failure and its anywhere from the drive bearing to the shaft end.
Hi T.moose I am jealous you got the book for nothing!
I had to pay for mine at a discarded library book sale, but it was only a £1 and at least its hardback. I looked for information on motor bearing arrangements too, but drew a blank like you, I'll carry on looking though.
Regards
desertfox