Lubrication Characteristics of Newtonian-Lubricated Hydrodynamic Bearing with Partial and Fully Textured Surface

In the present numerical-based study, the effect of triangular shape textured on the bearing steady-state performance has been investigated. The triangular shape texture having different values of depth size, number of textures and location has been used in the study to find the load carrying capacity and coefficient of friction and compared with untextured bearing. The pressure and fluid-film thickness in the lubricant flow domain having characteristics of iso-viscous and Newtonian fluid, which is governed with Reynold’s equation, have been solved by discretizing the domain into four-noded quadrilateral isoparametric elements by using finite element method. Four different cases of texture distribution, namely full textured region (0°–360°), first half textured region (0°–180°), second half textured region (180°-360°) and increasing pressure textured region (144°–288°) on the bearing surface have been studied under low and average eccentricity ratios of 0.2, 0.4 and 0.6. The performance enhancement ratio has been also calculated in order to finalize optimum design parameters. The results indicate that surface texturing in an increasing pressure region has a positive effect on the bearing performance enhancement ratio, when the bearing operates at lower eccentricity ratio of 0.2 and texture depth of 1.0.