CABARET – ESTL

Ball Bearing Analysis Software Training Course

The CABARET ball bearing analysis code has become a mainstay in bearing analysis for space applications in Europe. This virtual training course (first run in 2023) is aimed at new and intermediate CABARET users seeking to strengthen their understanding of CABARET’s software enabled workflows and gain confidence in their analysis of bearings used in their space mechanism designs.

Agenda

The CABARET virtual training course involves 4x 1.5h sessions, delivered online over 2 days, in the week ahead of ESMATS 2025 (Wednesday 17/9 and Thursday 18/9 in the afternoon). The sessions will cover the following:

  • Introduction to CABARET. Aim is to familiarise all participants with the software and ensure they can use it autonomously: running analyses, building assemblies, and collecting results.
  • Quasi-Static Analysis. Aim is to train common workflows involved in margin calculations of stresses, truncation, gapping, stiffness, preload (hard and soft), and inverse analysis.
  • inverse analysis.
  • Torque/Power. Aim is to teach the use of torque estimations, fluid lubricant properties, thermal matrix, lubrication regime analyses, and lubricant selection trade-offs.
  • Bearing Sizing Guideline and Guided Mode. Aim is to train the application of the guideline in initial bearing selection, PDR/CDR level designs using the software and the Guided Mode feature.

The sessions will involve short presentations of features and concepts, followed by longer exercises, which participants are going to solve under supervision.

Questions by participants will be collected ahead of the course and be addressed in a Q&A segment at the end of the relevant session.

About CABARET

CABARET is a code applicable to analysis of ball bearings operating at all speeds under general loading. Its use permits design and selection of ball bearings, materials and lubricants as well as prediction of bearing performance for a range of applications from low-speed mechanisms to high-speed turbopumps (the application for which it was originally developed).

CABARET integrates analyses for a number of features important in space ball-bearing performance in a single code:

  • Quasi-Static Analysis: Stiffness, Gapping, Truncation, Thermal, Fits, and Dilation effects.
  • Torque/Power Analysis: Coulombic Torque, Fluid traction, Fluid Power Losses.
  • Thermal effects: Flash Temperature, Thermal and Centrifugal Strain Effects, Thermal Conductance.
  • Cage Motion: Stability, Friction and Wear.
  • Fatigue Life
  • Vibration Analysis
  • Sensitivity Analysis
  • Libraries: Materials, Fluids, Bearings.
  • Modern GUI: Matlab-based App, standalone (no Matlab license required).

Registration Restrictions

Participants in the training course are required to obtain a CABARET sub-license for their institution prior to registration. Therefore, participation in the course is restricted to companies or institutions within ESA Member and Cooperating States (including Canada), who are entitled to a free-of-charge sub-licence of the software. To obtain access under an ESA sub-licence for space applications and if your company or institution is in an ESA member state, please download, complete and sign the application form and send it to Dr Achilleas Vortselas.

Participants can then register via the ESMATS conference registration page. Registration to the course is independent of participation in the conference or in any of the other training courses.

About the Presenter

Dr Achilleas Vortselas has been working at ESTL since 2018, as the developper of CABARET.

Dr Achilleas Vortselas, Research Engineer
email: achilleas.vortselas@esrtechnology.com
Tel: +44 (0)1925 843401
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ESR Technology, with the support of the European Space Agency, operates the European Space Tribology Laboratory (ESTL), Europe’s focus for expertise in space tribology for over 50 years. ESTL specialises in providing quality solutions to friction, wear and lubrication issues relating to the precision mechanisms that operate in the vacuum environment of space, or in terrestrial vacuum applications.

For any queries about the course or ESTL, please contact Mr Simon Lewis.

Simon Lewis, Manager, ESTL
email: Simon.Lewis@esrtechnology.com
Tel: +44 (0)1925 843451
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Fees

The CABARET training course involves 4x 1.5h sessions, delivered online over 2 days, in the week ahead of ESMATS 2025 (September 17th and 18th, 2025 in the afternoon on both days from 13:00 CEST to 16:30 CEST).

The registration fee includes secure access to all course materials (presentations and exercises) required.

Delegates can register for the CABARET Course presented by ESTL courtesy of EPFL’s registration system on this site. But this course is not part of the ESMATS 2025 Symposium and an additional fee of CHF514 (inclusive of 8.1% VAT) is payable by participants for this on-line course.

ESTL CABARET Course
CHF514 (inclusive of 8.1% VAT)
Registration link