POWER TRANSMISSION
Speeding up Design of Bearing Arrangements Engineers can now design complex bearing arrangements more quickly and easily, thanks to a simplified version of powerful simulation software from SKF.
B
earings are a fundamental part of any machine: designing the moving parts properly can mean the difference between an efficient machine and one that continually wears out and breaks down. For this reason, bearing manufacturers are keen to help their customers get this part of the design absolutely right. This takes many forms, from providing up-to-date online catalogues (including direct support from application engineers) to developing software to help them design their products more effectively.
While customers were demanding more advanced analysis of their bearing designs, they wanted to be able to do it in an intuitive way, using tools that were not excessively complex One way that SKF has done this is to take their in-house software called SimPro Expert, which it uses to develop and design highly complex bearing arrangements, and make it far more user-friendly for customers. SimPro Expert can be used to model an entire gearbox, in order to see the influence of one shaft on another, to determine the supporting properties of the housing, and to understand the detailed bearing behaviour for the given conditions.
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THE SOUTH AFRICAN MECHANICAL ENGINEER
“Our application engineers have grown up with this software, but you need to be a relatively frequent user and have a good level of bearing knowledge to get the most from it,” says Francisco Serrano, Manager for Product Line Engineering Tools at SKF.
Solid knowledge
“Although design engineers within OEM companies should have a solid knowledge of bearings, many may not consider themselves “experts”. They may not be designing bearing arrangements all the time, as SKF application engineers would do – with long intervals between individual bearing projects. Also, they cannot devote the time and effort to learning complex simulation software in detail.” This is one of the reasons why SKF has developed SimPro Quick – a stripped-down version of its more specialised bearing design programme. This software has the same core as more advanced products such as SimPro Expert and SimPro Spindle, and retains many of their advanced features, but is far easier to use. While customers were demanding more advanced analysis of their bearing designs, they wanted to be able to do it in an intuitive way, using tools that were not excessively complex. SimPro Quick is a single-shaft bearing simulation tool that was developed to quickly evaluate the design of bearing arrangements and their field performance, based on relevant application requirements and conditions.
Catalogue link
A key feature of the software is that it ties in with SKF’s new online Roller Bearing Catalogue, which
VOL 70 Mar/Apr 2020
