Hi, We have a SolidWORKS customer is Spain interested on Validate an optimize the desing of roller bearings.
He is asking us for a benchmark with Solidworks Simulation but i am not sure we can afford this kind of calculations directly.
They want to check the influence of Geometry, friction, diferent velocities, fatigue,static and dinamyc, diferent loads, etc.
The main problem from my point of view is managing the contacts.
I would be very happy if some of you has any experience on this area
Thank you.
It is not easy to model the internal contacts between the races and rollers and cage in a bearing. The contact patches are very small and are a function of the loads. It is hard to know if deflections cause by the loads will cause the contacts to shrink or grow. With general purpose FEA programs like SolidWorks Simulation you have to assume a lot of boundary conditions and have a fine mesh in areas where you think you have contact.
You may need a more specialized FEA program. I do know of a company called Advanced Numerical Solutions (www.ansol.us) that makes software that does this type of analysis. I doubt it comes cheap though.