Optimal Parameters of Grooved Conical Hybrid Journal Bearing With Shear Thinning and Piezo-viscous Lubricant Behavior

Abstract

To harness higher axial load capacity, a larger cone angle is used in conical bearings, resulting in an increase in the surface area which in turn increases the frictional power loss. The use of microgrooves in journal bearing helps in controlling this loss. Therefore, the present work is aimed to analyze conical hybrid journal bearing (i.e., combination of hydrostatic and hydrodynamic modes of operation) consisting of microgrooves along with shear thinning and piezo-viscous behavior of the lubricant. In this study, the microgroove attributes have been optimized by obtaining the solution of a Reynolds equation using finite element method and generalized minimum residual scheme (GMRES). These optimized groove attributes are used for numerically simulating the performance of the conical bearings. It has been observed that the best features of microgrooves and shear thinning behavior of the lubricant can be extracted to achieve better performance of the bearings. The results presented in this study are believed to be beneficial to the bearing designers and practising lubrication engineers.