I have a newbie question, so simple and straightforward answers are quite welcomed
For the sake of a bigger project I need to compare a realistic model of the lathe spindle against it’s much more simplified representation. For ball bearing simulation I was advised to use something like joint/hinge connection, which will result in unrestricted rotation around the inner race centroid(?), no movement of that pivot is allowed. Something more sophisticated than bonded contact and fixed support is needed. But I was unable to find such a connection in SimScale, tried to search for advice on bearings representation in the documentation and on the forum, but nothing popped out.
Tried to use rubbery type material for inner race and elastic support but without much luck in either case.
Well, for a linear analysis, you can switch the bonded contacts for sliding contacts. This is better because it frees the tangential forces, and should work under the assumption that no large slipping occurs.
Another route would be to get rid of the parts representing the bearings and using ‘Remote displacement’ conditions on the contact faces. In this case, you would keep the translation degrees of freedom of the remote point to zero, and release the desired rotations.
Thank you for your tips! With ‘Remote displacement’ condition there is a need to enter global coordinates of ‘External point’, is it possible to set it to center of the assigned face automatically? Or the only way is to find them in CAD software?
