Empirical Treatment of Hydrodynamic Journal Bearing Performance in the Superlaminar Regime

Abstract

The application of a perturbation in terms of simple correlations for friction in turbulent Couette and ‘screw’ flows, together with a further empirical assumption consonant with the experimental work of Smith and Fuller (1), leads to a pressure field equation identical in form with the Reynolds equation. The load capacity of journal bearings throughout most of the superlaminar range may be represented by a single curve, and existing laminar solutions may be applied with the parameters modified by Reynolds number. The theory is compared with published experimental results, and with the most successful theoretical treatment (4). The correlations obtained confirm the adequacy of the theory to predict performance in the superlaminar régime.