Effect of Micro-texture on Cavitation Distribution of Journal Bearing Friction Pair

Abstract

This study experimentally investigates the law and mechanism about the cavitation and bearing capacity of journal bearing with micro-texture. Numerical simulations and experiments are used in this paper to systematically research the influences on lubrication performance of journal bearing friction pair, which caused by the different distributions of texture on bearing surface and the different bearing speeds. The results show that the distribution of the texture has an obvious influence on the lubrication performance of the friction pair due to affecting macro-cavitation distribution besides local hydrodynamic effect. When the texture is arranged in the main loading area of bearing surface, the frictional coefficient increases and the lubrication performance decreases compared with that without texture. However, when the texture is arranged in the inlet area and the outlet area, the frictional coefficient reduces and the lubrication performance improves effectively, and the effect is the most obvious for the texture arranged in the outlet area. Moreover, when the texture is arranged in the outlet area, with the increase of bearing speed, the areas of macro-cavitation in the outlet area become larger, compared with when the texture in the inlet area. The bearing with texture at outlet surface can obtain best lubricating performance, because the marco-cavitation is obvious and oil film area decreases relatively, which leads to lower frictional coefficient between the interfaces.