Effect of Compressibility on Hydrodynamic Characteristics of Turbulent Lubricant Flow inJournal Bearings

Effect of lubricant compressibility on hydrodynamiccharacteristics of infinitely long journal bearings underturbulent and steady conditions is studied usingcomputational fluid dynamics techniques. It includesnumerical solution of two-dimensional Navier-Stokesequations coupled with the equations of turbulentkinetic energy and turbulent dissipation rate. Inanalyzing, the lubricant density is considered as afunctional variable of pressure. Because of the complexphysical geometry, conformal mapping is applied togenerate an orthogonal grid and governing equationsare transformed into the computational domain.Control volume method is used to discretize thetransformed equations and they are solved by theSIMPLE algorithm. Results prove that compressibilityhas considerable effect in produced hydrodynamicpressure and the load capacity in journal bearingsrunning under special conditions. The present resultsare compared with the numerical results of otherinvestigators and the agreement is satisfactory.

Keywords:

compressibility , hydrodynamic , journalbearings , turbulent flow