A study of sliding between rollers and races in a roller bearing with a numerical model for mechanical event simulations

A numerical model of a roller bearing is presented in this paper. These simulations provide us with the spatial and time distributions of stress and strain values, as well as all the nodal displacements at every time step. The model was developed with the finite element method (FEM) for mechanical event simulations (MES) with the commercial code Algor^TM. The model has been validated by verifying that the contact force distributions correspond to those predicted by the analytical model of Harris-Jones.As an application, a study of sliding between the rollers and the races has been carried out. For each roller, a rolling zone can be defined in which local sliding (computed between two consecutive time steps) is negligible. According to the simulations, we conclude that the rolling zone is practically the same for all the rollers in the same simulation; that this rolling zone is smaller than the corresponding load zone, and that rolling and load zones are angularly centered with respect to each other.