PERFORMANCE INVESTIGATION OF FLUID-LUBRICATED THRUST BEARINGS WITH VARYING TEXTURED PAD SURFACES USING COMPUTATIONAL FLUID DYNAMICS

It is known that surface texturing provides enhanced mechanical and thermal behavior in the application of journal/thrust bearings and seals. This work presents an examination of parallel sector-pad thrust bearings consisting of twelve pads with textured surfaces in terms of load carrying capacity, friction torque and thermal performance. In this respect, the influence of different texturing patterns on the thrust bearing performance are presented and studied through 3D computational fluid dynamics ( CFD) simulations based on the governing equations of incompressible lubricant, and these simulations are conducted in ANSYS-CFX. The previous studies commonly find optimum pattern geometry by keeping each pattern geometry the same such as only square and only elliptical. Unlike existing research studies, the use of varying dimple patterns which are the combinations of commonly used dimple geometries such as circular- elliptical, circular-square, and elliptical-square is investigated to demonstrate the performance of textured pads with varying pattern geometries. The simulation results are verified through experimental data provided in the literature. The CFD simulation results of varying patterned pads are compared with existing ones that are single patterned optimal designs. This study carries out optimal selection of varying dimple patterns that provides an insight for further optimization efforts on surface textured bearing and seals.