COMPARISON OF BALL BEARING MODEL PERFORMANCE WITH AND WITHOUT CENTRIFUGAL AND GYROSCOPIC FORCES

Bearing performance significantly affects the dynamic behaviors and estimated working life of a rotating system. A common bearing type is the ball bearing, which has been under investigation in numerous published studies. The complexity of the ball bearing models described in the literature varies as models with or without the inclusion of centrifugal forces or the gyroscopic moments of the rolling elements are equally proposed. Naturally, model complexity is related to computational burden. In particular, the inclusion of centrifugal forces and gyroscopic moments significantly increases the system degrees of freedom and lengthens solution time. On the other hand, for low or moderate rotating speeds, these effects can be neglected without significant loss of accuracy. The objective of this paper is to present guidelines for the appropriate selection of a suitable bearing model for a case study. To this end, two ball bearing models were implemented. One considers high-speed forces, and the other neglects them. Both models were used to study a single structure, and the simulation results were compared. The bearing behavior is studied at different shaft rotation speeds and the simulation results are used to determine when the model containing the centrifugal and gyroscopic forces should be used.