Hydrodynamic Lubrication of Micro-Grooved Gas Parallel Slider Bearings with Parabolic Grooves

The hydrodynamic lubrication performance of micro-grooved gas parallel slider bearings with parabolic grooves is investigated in this paper. By using the multigrid finite element method, the pressure distribution between a micro-grooved slider and a smooth slider is obtained. The geometric parameters of the parabolic grooves are optimized to maximize the average pressure under a given sliding speed. The numerical results show that geometric parameters such as groove depth, width, spacing, and orientation angle have an important influence on hydrodynamic pressure. Furthermore, the effect of sliding speed on hydrodynamic pressure is investigated under a given set of groove depths. It is observed that there is an optimum value of sliding speed to maximize the average pressure for any given groove depth and that the optimum value is dependent of the groove depth. The results of this study indicate that the average pressure could be improved by employing the optimized groove depth according to the practical sliding speed.