Influence of Texture Geometry in the Steady-State Performance of Dimple-Textured Journal Bearings Under the Effect of Lubricant Inertia

In the present study, an effort has been made to investigate the effects of two alternative texture geometries, spherical texture and cylindrical texture, on the steady-state performance characteristics of hydrodynamic journal bearing under the influence of lubricant inertia. The dimple texturing is considered in this study. Assuming a laminar flow and a Newtonian lubricant, the modified Reynolds equation is solved using the Gauss–Seidel method of successive over-relaxation. The numerically efficient progressive mesh densification method is used for faster convergence. The results from this study indicate that when lubricant inertia is considered, the spherically textured journal bearings provide superior performance characteristics than cylindrically textured bearings.