Direct Observation of Cavitation Phenomenon and Hydrodynamic Lubrication Analysis of Textured Surfaces

When a textured ring rotates relatively against the other texture-free ring in a parallel thrust bearing, cavitation of liquid lubricant may occur in the divergent zones of the dimples or grooves on the textured surface due to local pressure drops. The Reynolds and Jakobsson–Floberg–Olsson (JFO) models are two widely used cavitation models in hydrodynamic lubrication theory, where the former lacks mass conservation while the latter enforces it. In order to investigate the applicability of the two models to the hydrodynamic lubrication analysis of parallel thrust bearings with surface textures, comparison between experiment and simulation results has been carried out on parallel thrust bearings in terms of cavitation zone morphology in a groove, friction coefficient, and bearing clearance. The results have shown that the observed cavitation morphology in steady state is more similar to the prediction from the JFO model than that from the Reynolds model.