Using Bearing Connectors

Use a bearing connector when the housing is not much stiffer than the shaft. If the components supporting the shaft are much more rigid than the shaft, use a bearing fixture.

When defining a bearing connection, follow these guidelines:

• You define a bearing connection between two bodies. For additional bodies, define separate connections.
• A bearing connection does not consider the actual bearing geometry. If you defined bearing geometries, suppress them in the FeatureManager design tree.
• You must split the cylindrical face of the shaft that represents the contact area between the shaft and the housing.
• The feature supports the selection of multiple concentric faces of the shaft and housing.
• Although not recommended, you can select a circular shell edge for the housing if you model the housing as a surface.

  Isometric View	Front View

  In the figure, the blue circle is the shell edge selected for housing. t is the thickness of the shell. The distance between the split lines should also be t.

• You can define contact conditions between the face of the shaft and the housing.
• You must probe stress results far away from the connector to avoid capturing any stress concentration effects.
• After running a simulation, the bearing forces you can list on a connector are shear force, axial force, and bending moment. Torque moment is not a valid result as bearing connectors are not designed to transmit any significant value of torque. From the Simulation study tree, right-click the Results folder and select List Connector Force . Select a bearing connector or all bearing connectors to view the forces.