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The journal bearings subjected to heavy load and slow speed operate in mixed lubrication regime causing contact between the interacting surfaces and resulting in wear. Complexity of wear behavior and lack of unifying theory/model make wear-control very challenging.

In the present research work, theoretical and experimental investigations have been conducted to explore the effect of grooving arrangements on the wear behavior of journal bearing operating in mixed lubrication regime. The theoretical model of Hirani (2005) that uses mass conserving cavitation algorithm has been used to determine the bearing eccentricity for different groove arrangements (with varying groove location and extent) for identifying a groove arrangement that minimizes the wear. The wear tests on the grooved bearings were conducted after suitable running-in of the new bearings on a fully automated journal bearing test set-up. A load and speed combination required to operate the bearing in mixed lubrication was used. The performance of different arrangement of bearing was evaluated by measuring their weight loss after the test.

Wear was significantly reduced with the use of proper groove arrangement for a bearing operating in mixed lubrication regime.

The improvement in bearing performance by providing grooves has been the subject matter of several studies in the past, but these studies were confined to the hydrodynamic operative regime of the bearing. In the present work, seven different combinations of axial and radial groove arrangement were tried, which has not been reported in any other work.

Under the influence of loading, manufacturing, installation and other factors, the axis of sleeve bearing and journal will not be aligned, which will have a great impact on running stability and life of bearing. The existence of oil groove can effectively improve the life of sleeve bearing and working efficiency. The lubrication performance of two and three grooves sleeve bearing considering journal misalignment is analyzed.

To solve the difference of discontinuous position of oil film thickness, it is necessary to use the flow balance relationship in the finite control space, and oil film thickness equation of multi-groove sleeve bearing considering journal misalignment is gained.

The friction and bearing capacity of journal bearing with oil groove increase with the increase of journal inclination angle. At the same journal inclination angle, the bearing capacity of two-axial groove journal bearing is larger than that of three-axial groove journal bearing, but the friction of two-axial groove journal bearing shows the trend of the first bigger and then smaller than that of three-axial groove journal bearing.

The research has great significance to optimize bearing lubrication performance and increase bearing working life.

Different groove angles are used to study performance characteristics of two-axial groove journal bearing. In this study two grooves are located at ±90º to the load line. The various angles of grooves have been taken as 10° to 40° in the interval of 5°. Different equations such as Reynolds equation, three-dimensional energy equation and heat conduction equation have been solved using finite element method and finite difference method. Pressure distribution in fluid is found by using Reynolds equation. The three-dimensional energy equation is used for temperature distribution in the fluid film and bush. One-dimensional heat conduction equation is used for finding temperature in axial direction for journal. There is a very small effect of groove angle on film thickness, eccentricity ratio and pressure. There is a drastic change in attitude angle and side flow. Result shows that there is maximum power loss at large groove angle. So the smaller groove angle is recommended for two-axial groove journal bearing.

The finite element method is used for solving Reynolds equation for pressure distribution in fluid. The finite difference method is adopted for finding temperature distribution in bush, fluid and journal.

Pressure distribution in fluid is found out. Temperature distribution in bush, fluid and journal is found out. There is a very small effect of groove angle on film thickness, eccentricity ratio and pressure.

The groove angle used is from 10 to 40 degree. The power loss is more when angle of groove increases, so smaller groove angle is recommended for this study.

The location of groove angle predicts the distribution of pressure and temperature in journal bearing. It will show the performance characteristics. ±90° angle we will prefer that will get before manufacturing of bearing.

Due to this study, we will get predict how the pressure and temperature distribute in the journal. It will give the running condition of bearing as to at what speed and load we will get the maximum temperature and pressure in the bearing.

The finite element method is used for solving the Reynolds equation. Three-dimensional energy equation is solved using the finite difference method. Heat conduction equation is also solved for journal. The C language is used. The code is developed in C language. There are different equations which depend on each other. The temperature is dependent on pressure viscosity of fluid, etc. so C code is preferred.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the lubrication behavior of misaligned water-lubricated polymer bearings with axial grooves.

A lubrication model considering journal misalignment, bush deformation and grooves is established. In dynamic analyses of shaft systems, bearings are usually simplified as supporting points. Thus, an approach for solving the equivalent supporting point location is presented. The influence of misalignment angle and groove number on film thickness, hydrodynamic pressure distribution, load-carrying capacity and ESP location is investigated.

As the misalignment angle increases, the location of the maximum pressure and ESP are shifted toward the down-warping end, and the load-carrying capacity of the bearing decreases. In comparison to the nine-groove bearing, the six grooves bearing has a higher load-carrying capacity and the ESP is located closer to the down-warping end for an equivalent misalignment angle.

The results of this study can be applied to marine propeller shaft systems and other systems with misaligned bearings.

A study on the lubrication behavior of misaligned water-lubricated polymer bearings with axial grooves is of significant interest to the research community.

This paper aims to understand the aerodynamic blockage related to near casing flow in a transonic axial compressor using numerical simulations and to design an optimum casing groove for stall margin improvement using a surrogate optimisation technique.

A blockage parameter (Ψ) is introduced to quantify blockage across the blade domain. A surrogate optimisation technique is then used to find the optimum casing groove design that minimises blockage at an axial location where the blockage is maximum at near stall conditions.

An optimised casing groove that improves the stall margin by about 1% can be found through optimisation of the blockage parameter (Ψ).

Optimising for stall margin is rather lengthy and computationally expensive, as the stall margin of a compressor will only be known once a complete compressor map is constructed. This study shows that the cost of the optimisation can be reduced by using a suitably defined blockage parameter as the optimising parameter.

The purpose of this paper is to improve the lubrication performance of a water-lubricated polymer bearing with axial grooves, especially enlarge the minimum film thickness.

The bearing diameter is enlarged near the axial ends of the journal, with axial openings of a trumpet shape. A numerical model is developed which considers the proposed trumpet-shaped openings, bush deformation and grooves. The generatrix of the trumpet-shaped opening is assumed to be a paraboloid. Three different variations are covered, and the influences of the trumpet-shaped openings’ parameters on the bearing performance are analyzed.

The appropriate trumpet-shaped openings at the axial ends effectively increase the minimum film thickness, and the impact of trumpet-shaped openings on load carrying capacity is very small or even negligible. For the water-lubricated polymer bearing with axial grooves analyzed in this paper, the appropriate trumpet-shaped openings increase the minimum film thickness from 0.53 to 11.14 µm and decrease the load carrying capacity by 2.48 per cent.

The results of this study can be applied to marine propeller shaft systems and other systems with polymer bearings.

This paper has presented an approach for significantly increasing the minimum film thickness of a water-lubricated polymer bearing. A study on the performance improvement of water-lubricated polymer bearings with axial grooves is of significant interest to the research community.

This paper aims to elucidate the effects of lubricant groove shape, vertical load, swing angle and grease injection cycle on the friction and wear performances of journal bearings under the grease lubrication condition.

Three different types of lubricant grooves, namely, numeral eight-shaped, axial straight line-shaped and circular blind hole-shaped, were designed and machined in the bearing bush of journal bearings. The tribological behaviors of these journal bearings were investigated on the self-developed reciprocating swing friction and wear tester. Experimental data including the friction coefficient, the friction temperature, the wear loss and wear time were analyzed in detail. The wear morphologies of friction pairs were observed by scanning electron microscope and confocal laser scanning microscope.

The load carrying capacity and service life of the journal bearing with circular blind hole-shaped lubricant grooves are not affected. However, the load carrying capacities of journal bearings with numeral eight-shaped and axial straight line-shaped lubricant grooves are declined. The coverage areas of lubricating grease in the bearing bush are associated with the swing angle. The smaller the swing angle is, the more limited the coverage areas of lubricating grease get. Among these journal bearings, the maintenance-free time of journal bearing with circular blind hole-shaped lubricant grooves is the longest because of its large grease storage capacity.

The journal bearing with circular blind hole-shaped lubricant grooves exhibits the excellent antifriction and wear-resistant properties, making it suitable for the application in the low-speed and heavy-load engineering conditions.

Wear failure happens frequently in rubber seal of high-speed rotating shaft because of the dry friction. Some traditional lubrication methods are not effective because of the restrictions on the relative high speed, temperature and others. This paper aims to present a new method of lubrication with gas film for the rotation shaft seal based on the contact design.

To obtain the generation condition of gas film and good effect of lubrication in the contact gap between the shaft and its seal, a series of micro-spiral grooves are designed on the contact surface of rubber seal so as to obtain a continuous dynamic pressure difference.

The result is that the distribution of the gas film in the micro-gap is continuous under the design of the spiral grooves and the contact with eccentricity because of the deformation of rubber seal, which is verified through the simulation calculation and experiment test. It is confirmed that the lubrication method with gas film through designing micro-spiral grooves on the contact surface is effective, and can achieve self-adaptive air lubrication for the high-speed shaft under the premise of the reliable sealing.

The method of gas film lubrication is realized through designing a microstructure of spiral grooves on the rubber surface to change the contact status, which can form a mechanism of adaptive lubrication to reduce the dry friction automatically in the contact gap. For the cross-scale difference between the rubber seal and gas film, a new modeling method is presented by building the mapping relation for the split blocks and repairing technique with integrated computer engineering and manufacturing, to reduce the possibility of nonconvergence and improve the efficiency and accuracy of calculation.

The breakdown of laminar flow in the clearance space of a journal is considered, and the point of transition is considered in relation to experiments carried out with ‘bearings’ of large clearance. Experiments involving flow visualization with very large clearance ratios of 0.05 to 0.3 show that the laminar regime gives way to cellular or ring vertices at the critical Reynolds number predicted by G. I. Taylor for concentric cylinders even in the presence of an axial flow and at a rather higher Reynolds number in the case of eccentric cylinders. The effect of the transition on the axial flow between the cylinders is small. The critical speed for transition as deduced by Taylor, is little affected by moderate axial flows and is increased by eccentricity. The effect of critical condition on the axial‐flow characteristics of the bearing system appears to be negligible, again for moderate axial flows. Assuming that the results can be extrapolated to clearances applicable to bearing operation, the main conclusion of this paper is that the breakdown of laminar flow, which is a practical possibility in very high‐speed bearings, is delayed by eccentric operation.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the friction and sealing characteristics of narrow end face seal ring with spiral grooves for wet clutch by experiment.

The shallow spiral grooves are machined in the end face of narrow seal ring by laser, and all of other parameters of specimens are the same with the actual production. The investigation of friction and sealing characteristics are carried out by comparing the experiment results of end face seal ring with spiral grooves with the conventional seal ring without spiral grooves through friction coefficient test, volume leakage rate test and pv value test.

Comparing with conventional seal ring without spiral grooves, seal ring with spiral grooves experiences boundary lubrication, mixed lubrication and fluid film lubrication with the increase of rotation speed, whereas the conventional seal ring only experiences mixed lubrication. Besides this, the volume leakage rate is slightly larger, but the pv value is much larger than that of conventional seal ring.

Effect of spiral grooves on the friction and sealing characteristics of narrow end face seal ring for wet clutch is investigated. The improved lubrication performance can be achieved by shallow spiral grooves even if the distance of radius difference used to machine grooves is very small.