Abstract
Water-lubricated bearings are expected to be widely used because of convenience, green, safe and energy saving. The purpose of this study is to provide references for designing hydrodynamic water-lubricated step thrust bearings. The numerical analysis is undertaken under the condition of different pad dimensions, step heights, step positions, water film thicknesses and rotational speeds of thrust rings based on computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The results including pressure distribution, load carrying capacity, friction torque and friction coefficient are gained and compared for optimizing geometry parameters. A reference to determine water-lubricated step thrust bearing dimensions and a formula to check the minimum water film thickness are proposed.
Highlights
Step thrust bearings are widely used in pumps, highspeed turbomachineries to support axial loads because of its easy manufacturing and low cost [1, 2]
Works on water-lubricated bearings [5,6,7,8] showed that the bearings usually operate in the regime of mixed lubrication and the lubrication mode might convert to hydrodynamic when load decreases
The present work focuses on the hydrodynamic water-lubrication, considers the minimum water film thickness as a criterion of lubrication mode and aims at giving a reference for designing hydrodynamic water-lubricated step thrust bearings
Summary
Step thrust bearings are widely used in pumps, highspeed turbomachineries to support axial loads because of its easy manufacturing and low cost [1, 2]. The present work focuses on the hydrodynamic water-lubrication, considers the minimum water film thickness as a criterion of lubrication mode and aims at giving a reference for designing hydrodynamic water-lubricated step thrust bearings. Rohde [13] used the finite element method to solve the problem The present work investigates the step thrust bearings with sector pads and straight radial grooves under hydrodynamic lubrication by water. Three-dimensional CFD models with different bearing dimensions, film thicknesses, step heights and positions were computed to study the effects of them on load carrying capacities, friction torques and friction coefficients
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