scholarly journals Nanofluids for Performance Improvement of Heavy Machinery Journal Bearings: A Simulation Study

Nanomaterials ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 2120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hamid Sadabadi ◽  
Amir Sanati Nezhad

Nanofluids have extensive applications in hydrodynamic journal bearings used in heavy industry machinery. Inorganic fullerene-like tungsten disulfide nanoparticles (IF-WS2 NPs) are the most common additive for lubrication purpose due to their excellent mechanical characteristics along with their effect on reducing friction and wear. In this work, a computational simulation approach with discrete phase modeling (DPM) of suspended nanoparticles was used to evaluate the application of the IF-WS2 nanofluid lubricant on load carrying capacity of high-load journal bearings where the normal loads are high, considering the bearing dimensions. For accurate simulation, nanofluid viscosity was calculated considering the aggregation effect of NPs by using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) imaging of the nanofluids. A benchmark study was first performed to assess the model accuracy. Hydrodynamic lubrication was simulated under different nanofluid weigh fractions. The simulated pressure distribution was then employed to determine the load capacity of the bearing. The results show an approximately 20% improvement of load carrying capacity at 5% weight fraction of WS2-oil nanofluid.

Author(s):  
Belkacem Manser ◽  
Idir Belaidi ◽  
Sofiane Khelladi ◽  
Mohamed A Ait Chikh ◽  
Michael Deligant ◽  
...  

The tribological characteristic of journal bearing systems can be enhanced with the integrating of textures in the contact interfaces, or using the lubricating effect of non-Newtonian fluids. In this study, the combined effects of bearing surface texturing and non-Newtonian lubricants behavior, using micropolar fluid model, on static characteristics of hydrodynamic circular journal bearings of finite length are highlighted. The modified Reynolds equation of micropolar lubrication theory is solved using finite differences scheme and Elrod's mass conservation algorithm, taking into account the presence of the cylindrical texture shape on full and optimum bearing surfaces. The optimization textured area is carried out through particle swarm optimization algorithm, in order to increase the load lifting capacity. Preliminary results are in good agreement with the reference ones, and present an enhancement in the performances of micro-textured journal bearings (load carrying capacity and friction). The results suggest that texturing the bearing convergent zone significantly increases the load carrying capacity and reduce friction coefficient, while fully texturing causes bad performances. It is also shown that the micropolar fluids exhibit better performances for smooth journal bearings than a Newtonian fluid depending on the size of material characteristic length and the coupling number. The combined effects of fully surface textured with micropolar fluids reduce the performance of journal bearing, especially at lower eccentricity ratios. Considering the optimal arrangement of textures on the contact surface, a significant improvement in terms of load capacity and friction can be achieved, particularly at high eccentricity ratios, high material characteristic lengths and high values of the coupling numbers of micropolar fluids.


Author(s):  
Yanxiang Han ◽  
Qingen Meng ◽  
Gregory de Boer

A two-scale homogenization method for modelling the hydrodynamic lubrication of mechanical seals with isotropic roughness was developed and presented the influence of surface topography coupled into the lubricating domain. A linearization approach was derived to link the effects of surface topography across disparate scales. Solutions were calculated in a polar coordinate system derived based on the Elrod cavitation algorithm and were determined using homogenization of periodic simulations describing the lubrication of a series of surface topographical features. Solutions obtained for the hydrodynamic lubrication regime showed that the two-scale homogenization approach agreed well with lubrication theory in the case without topography. Varying topography amplitude demonstrated that the presence of surface topography improved tribological performance for a mechanical seal in terms of increasing load-carrying capacity and reducing friction coefficient in the radial direction. A Stribeck curve analysis was conducted, which indicated that including surface topography led to an increase in load-carrying capacity and a reduction in friction. A study of macro-scale surface waviness showed that the micro-scale variations observed were smaller in magnitude but cannot be obtained without the two-scale method and cause significant changes in the tribological performance.


2019 ◽  
Vol 141 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Venkata K. Jasti ◽  
Martin C. Marinack ◽  
Deepak Patil ◽  
C. Fred Higgs

This work demonstrates that granular flows (i.e., macroscale, noncohesive spheres) entrained into an eccentrically converging gap can indeed actually exhibit lubrication behavior as prior models postulated. The physics of hydrodynamic lubrication is quite well understood and liquid lubricants perform well for conventional applications. Unfortunately, in certain cases such as high-speed and high-temperature environments, liquid lubricants break down making it impossible to establish a stable liquid film. Therefore, it has been previously proposed that granular media in sliding convergent interfaces can generate load carrying capacity, and thus, granular flow lubrication. It is a possible alternative lubrication mechanism that researchers have been exploring for extreme environments, or wheel-regolith traction, or for elucidating the spreadability of additive manufacturing materials. While the load carrying capacity of granular flows has been previously demonstrated, this work attempts to more directly uncover the hydrodynamic-like granular flow behavior in an experimental journal bearing configuration. An enlarged granular lubricated journal bearing (GLJB) setup has been developed and demonstrated. The setup was made transparent in order to visualize and video capture the granular collision activity at high resolution. In addition, a computational image processing program has been developed to process the resulting images and to noninvasively track the “lift” generated by granular flow during the journal bearing operation. The results of the lift caused by granular flow as a function of journal rotation rate are presented as well.


Author(s):  
Sadanand Kulkarni ◽  
Soumendu Jana

High-speed rotating system development has drawn considerable attention of the researchers, in the recent past. Foil bearings are one of the major contenders for such applications, particularly for high speed and low load rotating systems. In foil bearings, process fluid or air is used as the working medium and no additional lubricant is required. It is known from the published literature that the load capacity of foil bearings depend on the operating speed, viscosity of the medium, clearance, and stiffness of the foil apart from the geometric dimensions of the bearing. In case of foil bearing with given dimensions, clearance governs the magnitude of pressure developed, whereas stiffness dictates the change in radial clearance under the generated pressure. This article deals with the effect of stiffness, clearance, and its interaction on the bump foil bearings load-carrying capacity. For this study, four sets of foil bearings of the same geometry with two levels of stiffness and clearance values are fabricated. Experiments are carried out following two factor-two level factorial design approach under constant load and in each case, the lift-off speed is measured. The experimental output is analyzed using statistical techniques to evaluate the influence of parameters under consideration. The results indicate that clearance has the maximum influence on the lift-off speed/ load-carrying capacity, followed by interaction effect and stiffness. A regression model is developed based on the experimental values and model is validated using error analysis technique.


Author(s):  
Ravindra Mallya ◽  
Satish B Shenoy ◽  
Raghuvir Pai

The static characteristics of misaligned three-axial water-lubricated journal bearing in the turbulent regime are analyzed for groove angles 36° and 18°. Ng and Pan’s turbulence model is applied to study the turbulence effects in the journal bearing. The static parameters such as load-carrying capacity, friction coefficient, and side leakage are found for different degree of misalignment (DM). The change in flow regime of the lubricant from laminar to turbulent and the increase in misalignment, improved the load capacity of the bearing. For lightly loaded bearings, the friction coefficient of the bearing increased with the increase in Reynolds number.


2012 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
T. V. V. L. N. Rao ◽  
A. M. A. Rani ◽  
T. Nagarajan ◽  
F. M. Hashim

The present study examines the influence of partial texturing of bearing surfaces on improvement in load capacity and reduction in friction coefficient for slider and journal bearing. The geometry of partially textured slider and journal bearing considered in this work composed of a number of successive regions of groove and land configurations. The nondimensional pressure expressions for the partially textured slider and journal bearing are derived taking into consideration of texture geometry and extent of partial texture. Partial texturing has a potential to generate load carrying capacity and reduce coefficient of friction, even for nominally parallel bearing surfaces.


1983 ◽  
Vol 105 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Bagci ◽  
A. P. Singh

The effect of the film shape on the load carrying capacity of a hydrodynamically lubricated bearing has not been considered an important factor in the past. Flat-faced tapered bearing and the Raileigh’s step bearing of constant film thickness have been the primary forms of film shapes for slider bearing studies and design data developments. This article, by the computer aided numerical solution of the Reynolds equation for two dimensional incompressible lubricant flow, investigates hydrodynamically lubricated slider bearings having different film shapes and studies the effect of the film shape on the performance characteristics of finite bearings; and it shows that optimized bearing with film shapes having descending slope toward the trailing edge of the bearing has considerably higher load carrying capacity than the optimized flat-faced tapered bearing of the same properties. For example the truncated cycloidal film shape yields 26.3 percent higher load carrying capacity for Lz/Lx = 1 size ratio, and 44 percent higher for Lz/Lx = 1/2. The article then presents charts for the optimum designs of finite slider bearings having tapered, exponential, catenoidal, polynomial, and truncated-cycloidal film shapes, and illustrates their use in numerical bearing design examples. These charts also furnish information on flow rate, side leakage, temperature rise, coefficient of friction, and friction power loss in optimum bearings. Appended to the article are analytical solutions for infinitely wide bearings with optimum bearing characteristics. The computer aided numerical solution of the Reynolds equation in most general form is presented by which finite or infinitely wide hydrodynamically or hydrostatically lubricated bearings, externally pressurized or not, can be studied. A digital computer program is made available.


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