Title: CFD-based method for hydrostatic bearings performance: static characteristics with various recess shapes

Authors: Minghui Guo; Zhuxin Tian; Xiaolin Feng; Yu Huang; Guojun Zhang; Youmin Rong

Addresses: State Key Lab of Digital Manufacturing Equipment and Technology, School of Mechanical Science and Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430074, China ' College of Mechanics and Power Engineering, China Three Gorges University, Yichang, 443002, China ' Faculty of Engineering and Life Sciences, Universiti Selangor, Bestari Jaya, Selangor, 45600, Malaysia ' State Key Lab of Digital Manufacturing Equipment and Technology, School of Mechanical Science and Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430074, China ' State Key Lab of Digital Manufacturing Equipment and Technology, School of Mechanical Science and Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430074, China ' State Key Lab of Digital Manufacturing Equipment and Technology, School of Mechanical Science and Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430074, China

Abstract: Hydrostatic bearings with recess are vulnerable to non-uniform oil film pressure and area effects. The above situation leads to decrease in stability and load carrying capacity (LCC) of bearings. In this paper, the influence of oil recesses structure on hydrostatic thrust bearings performance is discussed. The six oil recesses shapes were selected, and the static characteristics of bearings were simulated by using CFD method. The obtained results show that there are many differences in static characteristics of the hydrostatic thrust bearing caused by different recess shapes. The LCC increases with the recess circumference, and the maximum on equilateral triangle recess. It decreased 16.46% when the rotation speed from 0 to 5,000 rpm. The recess shape has no significant influence on the temperature distribution of oil film, but the average temperature is inversely proportional to the width of middle circle. Experiments are carried out to validate the simulations. When the bearing rotate speed at 1,000 rpm, the difference between experimental and simulation remains within 5%, indicating the validation of the CFD method.

Keywords: hydrostatic bearings; recess shape; CFD method; static characteristics.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHM.2024.138268

International Journal of Hydromechatronics, 2024 Vol.7 No.2, pp.176 - 192

Received: 22 Jul 2023
Accepted: 28 Nov 2023
Published online: 30 Apr 2024 *