Influence of the Number of Rollers on a Tapered Roller Bearing

In roller bearings, the outer ring is usually fixed and the inner ring has the rolling motion. Concerning TRB (tapered roller bearings), this motion generates forces that are transmitted to the outer ring by the tapered rollers. Thus, contact stresses occur and the number of rollers plays a major role with respect to the load distribution. This influence is analyzed in this study by the FEM (finite element method) with commercial code ABAQUS, where two models were evaluated: a common TRB and the same one but with fewer rollers. As an application, a manual automotive transmission was considered for the input loads.