Viscosity effect on stiffness of non-conventional (five tilted pads)‎ journal bearing

Abstract EN

In this tribological study, we highlight the effect of lubricating oil viscosity in the Multi-pads hydrodynamic journal bearings generate important improvement in characteristics of stiffness and stability in the high speed turbomachines.

Depending on viscosity of oil film (three values) variation for five tilted pads bearing, each pad is pivoted and is facilitated to be tilted with small angles, by using Matlab program, we calculate the oil film thickness for convergence layer.

We applied Reynold's equation and solved it's numerically by using finite difference method with 5 nodes technique to find the pressure distributed on each node in the mesh of tilted pad, then calculate stiffness coefficients.

Results show that there is clear effect on stiffens with viscosity change.

The increase in value of Krr (for n = 0.3) between viscosity (0.04 Pas.

s) and viscosity (0.058 Pas.

s) is14.33 MN/m, while the increase in Krr value between viscosity (0.058 Pas.

s) and viscosity (0.087 Pas.

s) is 11.37 MN/m.

the increase in value the of Kss (for n = 0.3) between viscosity (0.04 Pas.

s) and viscosity (0.058 Pas.

s) is5.921 MN/m, while increase in Kss value between viscosity (0.058 Pas.

s) and viscosity (0.087 Pas.

s) is9.55 MN/m respectively.

the increase in value of Ksr (for n = 0.3) between viscosity (0.04 Pas.

s) and viscosity (0.058 Pas.

s) is 8.95 MN/m, while the increase in Ksr value between viscosity (0.058 Pas.

s) and viscosity (0.087 Pas.

s) is 14.41 MN/m respectively.

the increase in value of Krs (for n = 0.3) between viscosity (0.04 Pas.

s) and viscosity (0.058 Pas.

s) are 5.08 MN/m, while the increase in Krs value between viscosity (0.058 Pas.

s) and viscosity (0.087 Pas.

s) is8.19 MN/m respectively.

The values of the dominate principal coefficients Krr is greater than that of Ksr, also The values of the principal coefficients Kss is greater than that of cross coupling Krs for all values of viscosity that studied.

From this result, we can conclude the side effect of cross coupling coefficients (Ksr ,Krs) can be overcome by great values for principal coefficient (Krr, Kss) respectively, so we can get good improvement instability for this bearing by variation the viscosity.

After that, we regarded to use high viscosity lubricant in multi-pad journal bearing to improve the performance and stability by controlling the stiffness coefficients