PERFORMANCE OF FLEXIBLE HYBRID BEARINGS IN LAMINAR AND TURBULENT REGIONS

Abstract

Hydrostatic / Hybrid journal bearing systems when subjected to heavy loads results in high fluid film pressure in bearings and deforms the bearing shell. This inturn modifies the fluid film thickness profile and ultimately changes the bearing performance. If the bearing operates at higher speeds, the laminar flow assumption is violated. Therefore, the bearing performance characteristics computed by considering the assumption that both bearing shell and journal are absolutely rigid and bearing operates in laminar regime may not be appropriate to use. Therefore the effect of bearing shell flexibility along with the turbulent flow conditions is studied in this work for the case of multirecess Hybrid / Hydrostatic journal bearing system. The turbulence effect is considered interms of pressure and shear Reynolds number. The static performance characteristics are presented interms of maximum pressure, minimum film thickness, bearing flow, attitude angle and dynamic performance characteristics are presented interms of stiffness coefficients, damping coefficients and threshold speed for orifice restrictor