Abstract
Since the advent of computers, considerable work has been done on the analysis of journal bearings under dynamic loading. Most of this work has been restricted to bearings with circumferential symmetry, since departure from this assumption increases the computation time very severely. Fortunately, this assumption satisfies most of the cases encountered in practice in the field of reciprocating machines, where the majority of bearings have centre circumferential grooves or oil holes in their lightly loaded regions. However, bearings have been proposed with circumferential grooves over part of the circumference and it has previously been difficult to evaluate such designs.
This paper describes a new computer programme which takes advantage of the experience gained in earlier work to analyse the performance of journal bearings without circumferential symmetry under dynamic loading. A practical diesel engine design is evaluated and the results are presented. It is found that the programme requires a 40-fold increase in computing time and therefore cannot be economically used as a routine design tool. However, it is shown that the simpler programme, which assumes circumferential symmetry, may be used to put bounds on the performance of such bearings.
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