Thermohydrodynamic performance of journal bearing with partial reverse flow and finger-type cavitation

Abstract

Firstly, a new calculation method is presented to solve the energy equation of the oil film in plain bearing in analysing the thermohydrodynamic performance of the bearing. The energy equation is made discrete by means of the control volume method widely used in computational fluid dynamics (CFD), and the coefficients of the discretized equations are determined by means of the hybrid scheme, also widely used in CFD. This method can make it easier to obtain convergent solutions of the temperature distribution in the lubricating film, even where a large extent of the reverse flow region exists at the oil film inlet. Next, a new model is proposed to calculate the heat flow at the pad-film interface in the cavitated region. The model is based on the idea that the heat fluxes in the lubricant streams and in the cavities should be calculated separately. The thermohydrodynamic performance of a two-lobe journal bearing is calculated by means of the new method and the new model. The results are in good agreement with the measurements by Ma and Taylor.

Keywords

tribology thermohydrodynamic lubrication theory numerical analysis cavitation model reverse flow

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