Surface Roughness Effects in High-Speed Hydrodynamic Journal Bearings

Abstract

This paper describes an applicability of modified Reynolds equation considering the combined effects of turbulence and surface roughness, which was derived by Hashimoto and Wada (1989), to high-speed journal bearing analysis by comparing the theoretical results with experimental ones. In the numerical analysis of modified Reynolds equation, the nonlinear simultaneous equations for the turbulent correction coefficients are greatly simplified to save computation time with a satisfactory accuracy under the assumption that the shear flow is superior to the pressure flow in the lubricant films. The numerical results of Sommerfeld number and attitude angle are compared with the experimental results to confirm the applicability of the modified Reynolds equation in the case of two types of bearings with different relative roughness heights. Good agreement was obtained between theoretical and experimental results.