SIMPACK

Simpack BEARINX Map for Rolling Bearings enables the software BEARINX® from Schaeffler Technologies to be used in Simpack. BEARINX® allows the calculation of accurate bearing forces and torques for a large number of rolling bearings.

Non-linear stiffness as well as coupling effects and bearing clearance are described by a characteristic field in a BEARINX Map (.bxm) file, which must be provided by Schaeffler Technologies.

Engineer’s Obstacles in Rolling Bearing Design and Selection

Bearings are the most frequently used machine element in power transmission. A poorly designed rolling bearing can quickly lead to damages of the bearing itself and/or the drive train. In worst case, a chain reaction induces the total loss of your complete system. Thanks to detailed basic research works (e.g. PALMGREN, LUNDBERG, GAERTNER, see [1], [3] and [4]), standardized formulas were introduced to enable engineers to properly design and select bearings in terms of carrying capacity by means of the bearings load spectrum. To calculate a reliable lifetime expectancy, the load spectrum has to be as realistic as possible. However, due to unknown operational loads and complex interactions between the bearing and the system, the required representational bearing loads are hard to estimate. Besides this, the demand on decreasing acoustic emission and detailed transfer path analysis is growing, which raises questions regarding the detailed rolling bearing dynamics and its influence on the system dynamics. To cover all these highly involved design topics confronting nowadays engineers, powerful tools for the dynamic roller bearing and system analysis are required.

Simpack Rolling Bearing

To address the mentioned obstacles in Rolling Bearing analysis, Simpack offers the Force Element “Rolling Bearing”. This Force Element efficiently simulates all common types of rolling bearings by resolving the rolling element contacts under consideration of the inner geometry. On one hand, this takes the detailed transmitting behavior of a bearing into account, because the non-linear stiffness characteristics, clearance and cross-coupling are automatically considered. On the other hand, the approach covers the excitations generated by the bearing (e.g. due to rolling elements passing through the loaded zone). The high efficiency of this Force Element and the consideration of the transmitting and excitation effects of a bearing enable the engineer to generate realistic load spectra, which take the interaction of the rolling bearing with the complete system into account. In terms of carrying capacity, lightweight construction, and acoustic emission, this element makes the design and selection of the best bearing solution much easier.

Supported Bearing Types

• Ball Bearings: deep groove, angular, thrust, four point
• Cylinder / Needle: radial, thrust
• Tapered Roller Bearing
• Barrel and Spherical Roller Bearings