Control of self-excited rotor disturbances in three-lobe journal bearing space using a couple stress lubricant

Abstract

In this study, the dynamic behavior of three-lobe noncircular hydrodynamic journal bearings lubricated with couple stress fluid is presented. Currently, application of journal bearings with different geometries such as lobed bearings and using non-Newtonian lubricants, including various additives, are the common suggested solutions by tribology researchers to improve the performance of rotor-journal bearing systems. Due to the incompatibility of new lubricant behaviors including polymer chains or other types of suspended particles with considerable size from the classic Navier–Stokes equations, different models such as couple stress fluid theory have been proposed to evaluate their performance. To investigate the self-excited rotor disturbances caused by various factors, like operating in critical speeds, simultaneous solution of governing Reynolds equation of oil lubricant and the rotor motion equations has been done. The result of dynamic analyses using linear and nonlinear approaches indicates the possibility of enhancing the stiffness and damping ability of the three-lobe bearings by strengthening the couple stress properties of lubricant. It is seen from the results that by increasing the couple stress parameter of oil, the type of rotor perturbations in the bearing clearance space changes from divergent oscillations, as a leading cause of collision between the rotor surface and the bearing shell, to limit cycle motion around the rotor stable position or convergent fluctuations to the static equilibrium point. This improvement in the stability range of three-lobe journal bearings using a couple stress lubricant appears in the results of a linear analysis model in terms of increasing the critical mass parameter and decreasing the whirl frequency ratio. In addition, bifurcation diagram results show that using noncircular three-lobe bearings instead of circular types and replacing the Newtonian lubricant with the couple stress fluid improve the dynamic stability of rotor- bearing supports.