A Tribological Study of Partial-Arc Bearings With Egg-Shaped Surface Texture for Microturbine Applications

Recent research has demonstrated that proper use of texture geometries can improve the performance of journal and thrust bearings. In particular, for journal bearings, elliptical and egg-shaped texture patterns appear as promising candidates for improving bearing performance, in terms of load carrying capacity and friction coefficient. The expected advantages should also hold for partial-arc bearings, which, for small scale – high speed applications, are characterized by significant advantages, in comparison to full bearings. In the present paper, a tribological study of partial-arc journal bearings with periodic egg-shaped texture applied on the stator surface is presented. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations are performed and processed to yield the bearing performance indices. Here, the bearing geometry and the texture characteristics are defined parametrically; a wide range of bearing designs is thus accounted for. Flow simulations are based on the numerical solution of the Navier-Stokes equations for incompressible isothermal flow. The effects of dimple shape, bearing eccentricity, bearing arc angle, and slenderness ratio on the bearing performance are investigated. The present results demonstrate that a substantial improvement of journal bearing performance, especially in terms of the friction coefficient, in comparison to that of smooth bearings, is feasible.