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

Effect of lubricant compressibility on hydrodynamic characteristics of infinitely long journal bearings under turbulent and steady conditions is studied using computational fluid dynamics techniques. It includes numerical solution of two-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations coupled with the equations of turbulent kinetic energy and turbulent dissipation rate. In analyzing, the lubricant density is considered as a functional variable of pressure. Because of the complex physical geometry, conformal mapping is applied to generate an orthogonal grid and governing equations are transformed into the computational domain. Control volume method is used to discretize the transformed equations and they are solved by the SIMPLE algorithm. Results prove that compressibility has considerable effect in produced hydrodynamic pressure and the load capacity in journal bearings running under special conditions. The present results are compared with the numerical results of other investigators and the agreement is satisfactory.