Abstract
Surface texturing is becoming an effective way for increasing the performance of hydrodynamic bearings. However, introducing the texture on the lubricated sliding contact may lead to the presence of the inertia effect as well as the cavitation effect. In this study, the correlation between the inertia and the cavitation in textured bearing is investigated in terms of hydrodynamic pressure and load support. The Navier-Stokes equation based on CFD and modified Reynolds equation are applied. In addition, the use of slip condition and its effect on the performance of bearing is of particular interest. The simulations are conducted in very low sliding velocity to address the low inertia effect. The result shows that increasing inertia effect can increase the load support, but the cavitation effects is not found in the bearing pattern in which the inertia is not significant. The other interesting result concludes that slip reduces the load support, but on the other hand slip also increases the load support depending on the texture length.
Highlights
Textured surface have become an effective technique to improve the tribological performance of lubricated mechanical components
The result shows that increasing inertia effect can increase the load support, but the cavitation effects is not found in the bearing pattern in which the inertia is not significant
For the case of the bearing with low texture length (i.e b = 0.25 mm), the pressure profile predicted by both Reynolds equation and Navier-Stokes equation with/without cavitation model is quite lower than that with higher b
Summary
Textured surface have become an effective technique to improve the tribological performance of lubricated mechanical components. It is known that by introducing textured surfaces significantly can affect the load support of sliding bearings. As is well known, when the texture is applied on the bearing, the inertia as well as the cavitation may exist and affect the lubrication performance. Based on the numerical simulations, Dobrica and Fillon [1] analysed the validity of Reynolds equation and proposed on how to take into account the inertia effect in modelling textured infinitely wide parallel sliders. These results showed that inertia has negative effects, reducing the load capacity of the slider
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