During the high-speed operation of cylindrical roller bearings， there is a certain deflection angle between the contact line of the rollers and raceways and the bearing rotation axis. This roller deflection phenomenon leads to an uneven distribution of load stress along the contact line between the rollers and the inner and outer rings， exacerbating localized wear of the rollers. Therefore， addressing the current issues of insufficient research on roller deflection patterns and unclear characterization methods for roller deflection in roller bearings， this paper takes an aerospace cylindrical roller bearing as the research subject. Based on the explicit dynamics theory， a simulation mesh model is established using LS-PREPOST and solutions are computed via ANSYS/LS-DYNA. The finite element of explicit dynamics simulation is conducted on cylindrical roller bearings and a method is proposed for tracking and extracting roller skew data， taking account of bearing speeds， loads and the pocket clearance of cage. The feasibility of simulation is verified by experimental testing. The simulation results show that the skew angle of cylindrical roller is greatly affected by radial loads and bearing speeds. As the load and rotation speed increase， the average and maximum values of the roller skew angle decrease and the fluctuation amplitude shows a decreasing trend. When the load increases from 2 446 N to 5 118 N， the average roller deflection decreases by 25.7%， and the maximum value decreases by 18.3%. When the speed increases from 5 225 r/min to 20 900 r/min， the average roller deflection decreases by 21.06%， and the maximum value decreases by 19.1%. Compared to the radial loads and rotation speeds， the clearance of the cage pocket has a significant impact on roller skew. When the pocket clearance is less than 0.12 mm， the restricted motion space of the rollers intensifies collisions between the rollers and the cage， resulting in severe yaw fluctuations of the rollers. Conversely， when the pocket clearance exceeds 0.12 mm， both the maximum and average values of the cylindrical roller yaw increase， which in turn amplifies the vibration of the rolling bearing. For the study presented in this paper， selecting a pocket clearance around 0.12 mm is beneficial for reducing the mean and maximum values of the roller yaw angle as well as the amplitude of its fluctuations.