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The purpose of this paper is to analyze journal thrust bearings geometries, used in household refrigerators, using a modified version of the Reynolds equation which includes the inertial terms.

The Reynolds equation was solved through the finite volume method, thus providing the pressure field in the lubricant film and, consequently, the load and the power used by the bearing. Such parameters depend on bearing geometry, which was optimized through the method of Lagrange multipliers, to support a given load and use the lowest power possible. The optimized geometries included the Rayleigh pad with 4, 8 and 16 steps, and a milled geometry with 4 steps.

For the Rayleigh pad, the number of steps was varied and a decrease in the power consumed with the increase in the number of steps was observed. The milled pad performance was better than that Rayleigh pad with 4 steps and comparable to the pad with 8 steps.

The manufacture of pads, with a high number of steps, is complicated and, then, a milled pad with 4 steps was proposed in this paper. The use of milled pads is a technological innovation worthy of a more thorough investigation, considering its facility of manufacture when compared to the Rayleigh pad.

The aim of this paper is to study the effect of deterministic roughness and small elastic deformation of surface on flow rates, load capacity and coefficient of friction in Rayleigh step bearing under thin film lubrication.

Reynolds equation, pressure-density relationship, pressure-viscosity relationship and film thickness equation are discretized using finite difference method. Progressive mesh densification (PMD) method is applied to solve the related equations iteratively.

The nature and shape of roughness play a significant role in pressure generation. It has been observed that square roughness dominates the pressure generation for all values of minimum film thickness. Deformation more than 100 nm in bounding surfaces influences the film formation and pressure distribution greatly. Divergent shapes of film thickness in step zone causes a delay of pressure growth and reduces the load capacity with decreasing film thickness. The optimum value of film thickness ratio and step ratios have been found out for the maximum load capacity and minimum coefficient of friction, which are notably influenced by elastic deformation of the surface.

It is expected that these findings will help in analysing the performance parameters of a Rayleigh step bearing under thin film lubrication more accurately. It will also help the designers, researchers and manufacturers of bearings.

Most of the previous studies have been limited to sinusoidal roughness and thick film lubrication in Rayleigh step bearing. Effect of small surface deformation due to generated pressure in thin film lubrication is significant, as it influences the performance parameters of the bearing. Different wave forms such as triangular, sawtooth, sinusoidal and square formed during finishing operations behaves differently in pressure generation. The analysis of combined effect of roughness and small surface deformation has been performed under thin film lubrication for Rayleigh step bearing using PMD as improved methods for direct iterative approach.

Nowadays, the use of Newtonian fluid as a lubricant is diminishing day by day, and the use of non-Newtonian fluids has gained importance. This paper presents an analysis of the static characteristics of Rayleigh step slider bearing lubricated with non-Newtonian Rabinowitsch fluid, which has not been studied so far. The purpose of this paper is to derive the modified Reynolds equation for Rabinowitsch fluids for two regions and to obtain the optimum bearing parameters for the Rayleigh step slider bearings.

The governing equations relevant to the problem under consideration are derived. The modified Reynolds equation is derived, and it is found to be highly non-linear and hence small perturbation method is adopted to find solution.

From this study it is found that there is an increase in the load-carrying capacity, pressure and frictional coefficients for dilatant fluids as compared to the corresponding Newtonian case. Further, for dilatant lubricants the maximum load-carrying capacity is attained for the slightly larger values of entry region length of Rayleigh step bearing as compared to Newtonian and pseudoplastic lubricants.

Rabinowitsch fluid is used for the study of lubrication characteristics of Rayleigh step bearings. The author believes that the paper presents these results for the first time.

The main purpose of this paper is to understand and model the hydrodynamic influence of surface textures on journal bearings.

In the model, a rectangular array of circle dimples is used to modify the film thickness expression. In full film and cavitation regions, classical Reynolds equation and Reynolds boundary condition are used as the governing equations, respectively. By setting high load bearing capacity as the main optimal goal, the influence of textures on tribological characteristics is studied to get the optimal distribution and parameters of textures.

The results suggest that the load bearing capacity of a journal bearing may be improved through appropriate arrangement of textures partially covering its sleeve. The reduction of the cavitation area may also be achieved by arranging the textures in divergent region. With a high density distribution of textures which have step depths varying linearly along the circumferential direction of the bearing, the load bearing capacity enhancement seems to give good performance. Comparing with smooth bearing, the load bearing capacity enhancement of such textures is about 56.1 per cent, although the influence of texture diameters for the same area density seems insignificant.

The paper shows how surface textures can be designed on journal bearing to improve its tribological performances.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a simulation and experimental research concerning the effect of recess depth on the lubrication performance of a hydrostatic thrust bearing by constant rate flow.

The computational fluid dynamics and finite volume method have been used to compute the lubrication characteristics of an annular recess hydrostatic thrust bearing with different recess depths. The performances are oil recess pressure, oil recess temperature and oil film velocity. The recess depth has been optimized. A test rig is established for testing the pressure field of the structure of hydrostatic thrust bearing after recess depth optimization, and experimental results show that experimental data are basically identical with the simulation results, which demonstrates the validity of the proposed numerical simulation method.

The results demonstrate that the oil film temperature decreases and the oil film pressure first increases and then decreases with an increase in the recess depth, but oil film velocity is constant. To sum up comprehensive lubrication performance, the recess depth of 3.5 mm is its optimal value for the annular recess hydrostatic thrust bearing.

The computed results indicate that to get an improved performance from a constant flow hydrostatic thrust bearing, a proper selection of the recess depth is essential.

The aim of this paper is to propose a design idea for an infinite journal bearing with the optimized slip zone on the bearing sleeve surface.

The approach is to use finite element analysis and the quadratic programming algorithm to study the performance of the journal bearing with a slip zone on the sleeve surface. The fluid film pressure and slip velocity can be obtained in one solution step.

A journal bearing with a slip zone on the sleeve surface produces many different advantages over the traditional journal bearing. Even in a parallel sliding gap there is still a considerable large load support, but a very low friction drag. The effect of the enhancement of such a slip wedge on the journal bearing performance is much greater at a small eccentricity ratio than at a large eccentricity ratio. Numerical analyses indicate that the location and size of the slip zone greatly affect the journal performance. When the eccentricity ratio ϵ=0.8, the maximum load support is increased by ∼19 per cent and surface friction coefficients reduced by ∼35 per cent and ∼42 per cent at shaft and sleeve surfaces, respectively.

The paper shows how the present concept can be used to design not only a journal bearing but also a thrust bearing with a slip wedge.

The purpose of this paper is to study thermal-fluid-solid coupling deformation and friction failure mechanism of bearing friction pairs under the working conditions of high speed and heavy load.

The deformation is simulated based on thermal-fluid-solid coupling method, its deformation distribution law is revealed and the relationships of deformation of friction pairs, rotational speed and bearing weight are obtained.

The results prove that the oil film temperature rises sharply, the lubricating oil viscosity decreases rapidly, the film thickness becomes thinner, the deformation increases, the whole deformation is uneven and the boundary lubrication or dry friction are caused with the increase in rotational speed and bearing load.

The conclusions provide theoretical method for deformation solution and friction failure mechanism of hydrostatic thrust bearing.

The purpose of this study is to improve the tribological performance of meso scale air journal bearing by adopting texture on the bearing surface.

The present study is based on numerical analysis. The detailed numerical investigation is carried out using a fluid flow based thin-film model in COMSOL 5.2 software.

The influence of texture design parameters: geometry (shape, orientation and slender ratio), and position on the tribological performance of meso scale air journal bearing is investigated. It is found that texture shape has a strong influence on the tribological characteristics such as load capacity and friction coefficient of the bearing. Slender texture improves the load capacity, but it has a negligible effect on the reduction of friction coefficient. In contrast, texture orientation is found to be insignificant for both increasing load capacity and decreasing friction coefficient. Furthermore, the maximum improvement in load capacity is obtained for partially textured bearing, but the minimum friction coefficient is achieved for full texturing.

The present study investigates the influence of texture design parameters viz geometry (shape, orientation and slender ratio), and position on the tribological performance of meso scale air journal bearing.

The stepped topography of the friction pairs mainly causes the fluid film thickness to change in the direction of motion. In this region, there have very few topographical design methods for continuous or non-linear distribution of the fluid film. The purpose of this study is to analyze the effect of the curved surface on the performance of the liquid film.

First, a numerical simulation is used to solve the optimal bearing capacity and friction coefficient of the liquid film under the condition of the minimum film thickness. Then, the curved surface described by the sinusoidal curve equation is applied in the transitional region of maximum and minimum film thickness. The bearing capacity and the friction coefficient of the liquid film are respectively simulated and compared in the same condition of the minimum film thickness.

The research results show that the liquid film using the curved surface transition model, the optimal bearing capacity is significantly increased by 32 per cent while the optimal friction coefficient is clearly reduced by 38 per cent in comparison with using stepped surface model.

The friction pair with curved transition enables better lubrication performance of the liquid film and better adaptability under unstable conditions.

This paper aims to establish the mathematical models for the water-lubricated thrust bearing with groove texture considering turbulence and cavitation and numerically analyze the influence of rotary speed, texture depth, groove number and groove width on the static performance of the bearing.

The turbulent Reynolds equation and the Jakobsson–Floberg–Olsson cavitation model are adopted for the analysis. The Payvar–Salant algorithm and Finite difference schemes are used to discretize the governing equations. To illustrate the influence of turbulence, the performance of the bearing predicted by the turbulent and laminar models are compared.

According to the results, the load capacity and the friction force calculated by the turbulent model are greater than those obtained by laminar model, and the deviation between them gradually increases with the increased rotary speed. So, the turbulent effect should be fully considered for high-speed water-lubricated bearing with surface texture. There exists a peak value for the load capacity of the water-lubricated thrust bearing in respect to the texture depth, the number of grooves and the groove width ratio, while the friction force varies slowly with those parameters. Well-designed groove texture can improve the performance of the water-lubricated thrust bearing.

This paper proposes a mathematical model considering turbulent and cavitation effect for water-lubricated thrust bearing with surface texture. This model can be complementary to conventional laminar model which is used to analyze the performance of textured bearing at low rotary speed.