Abstract: There is a close relationship between rolling contacting behavior and the service life of roller bearing. At present, numerical simulation is a main method adopted in the study of dynamic contacting nature of roller bearing. Several key issues are discussed carefully by introducing dynamic finite element models with different parameters based on ANSYS/LS-DYNA. Effects on calculation results from material model, boundary condition and size of element are investigated separately. Numerical simulation results show that those effects can not be neglected in the study of dynamic contacting nature of roller bearing. It finds that roller’s maximum stress calculated from the bearing model with rigid inner ring and outer ring is larger than that from the model with elastomeric inner ring and outer ring, and axes displacements in the loading direction also have a larger fluctuation. Both maximum stresses and axes displacements calculated from the bearing model with fixed inner ring and rotating outer ring are larger than that from the model with rotating inner ring and fixed outer ring. And it also finds that size of element has a great effect upon the dynamic result. Maximum stress calculated from the model with smaller size element is larger than the other one distinctly. Conclusions can be used to give some useful references for the study of dynamic contacting nature of roller bearing.

Key words: Dynamic contact, Finite element, Numerical simulation, Roller bearing