Study on the performance of journal bearings in different lubricants by CFD and FSI method with thermal effect and cavitation

Abstract

This paper used a new transient computational fluid dynamics and fluid–structure interaction method to investigate the journal bearing performance with the effect of thermal and cavitation, to reveal the performance of journal bearing in different lubricants and to provide substitution references for bearings in different lubricants. Considering thermal effect, elastic deformation and cavitation, a detailed discussion was conducted to show the performance of plain journal bearings lubricated by water, seawater, and lubricating oil by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and fluid structure interaction (FSI) method. And the results in this work are compared with the published results. The variation of dimensionless load carrying capacity, maximum film pressure and temperature with eccentricity ratio are presented, which can provide reference for the design of bearings. Furthermore, a diagram is presented for journal bearings with different diameter, length-diameter ratio and lubricants, which can be used as a reference for the equivalent substitutions of bearings. The present research provides references as to the design of bearings and the substitutions of bearings by different lubricants.