Effect of micro-grooved surface on the static and dynamic characteristics of journal bearings with misalignment

This paper presents a hydrodynamic lubrication model to investigate the static and dynamic characteristics of micro-grooved bearings considering journal misalignment. An averaged Reynolds equation with the mass conservation is derived and numerical procedure is solved by the finite difference method. The influences of eccentricity ratio, misalignment and micro-groove parameters on lubrication performances of aligned/misaligned journal bearings are compared systematically. Mathematical expressions of five micro-grooves with different geometric shapes i.e., straight-groove, left spiral-groove, right spiral-groove, left herringbone-groove and right herringbone-groove are given. The results show that with the increase of degree of misalignment, the load carrying capacity, main stiffness and damping coefficients increase, and the friction coefficient decreases, while the effect of misalignment angle on bearing performance is opposite. The results also indicated that the left herringbone-groove has better performance improvement for aligned journal bearing, while the right spiral-groove has better performance improvement for misaligned journal bearing under the optimal micro-groove parameters, especially at low eccentricity ratio. Moreover, the amount of the performance improvement of micro-grooved bearing depends on the design of the micro-groove parameters. This study can provide theoretical guidance for the design optimization of micro-grooved journal bearings with misalignment.