Numerical analysis of herringbone-grooved gas-lubricated journal bearings using a multigrid technique

In this paper, a multigrid technique is applied to the compressible Reynolds equation discretized by the divergence formulation in order to analyze both static and dynamic characteristics of herringbone-grooved gas-lubricated journal bearings. The developed code demonstrates quicker convergence than an optimized successive over-relaxation scheme, and the dominance in numerical efficiency is especially remarkable at higher values of bearing number where slow convergence is generally observed. Comparisons between the present nonlinear orbit solutions and previously published experimental results show reasonable agreement in both steady-state and dynamic stability performances.