Numerical Analysis of Hydrodynamic Journal Bearing Lubrication using Computational Fluid Dynamics and Fluid Structure Interaction Approach

Abstract

Now-a-days, journal bearings are subjected to severe loads and higher operating speeds causing generation of high hydrodynamic pressures which in turn deform the bearing shell thus modifying the lubricating film in the operating region. Hence, there is need for optimized bearing performance parameter estimation considering the realistic change in lubricating film along with less computational time. In this paper, response surface optimization module coupled with static structural and fluent, available in ANSYS workbench is used for analysing the performance of the bearing. The optimization is based on Response Surface evaluations. It has been observed that the computation time is considerably reduced. The bearing is analysed for various rotational speeds and eccentricity ratios to obtain load carrying capacity and pressure distribution. It is observed that the results are following the expected trend i.e. as speed increases the load carrying capacity as well as maximum pressure is increasing.