Investigation of inner contact and friction conditions of a spherical roller bearing using multi-body simulation

At the Institute of Machine Elements, Gears, and Transmission (MEGT, University of Kaiserslautern) a spherical roller bearing has been modeled in an multi body system (MBS) environment. The use of the commercial MBS (multi-body system) software (MSC ADAMS) allows the development of user-written subroutines for contact recognition and the calculation of contact forces. Those subroutines can help understanding the principles of friction phenomena inside spherical roller bearings, while the measurement of those effects is difficult.Measurements on a friction torque test rig for roller bearings are used to validate the MBS models. Since the sum of all contact forces equals the friction of the bearing, this test stand provides a way for validation of the contact and friction calculations.