Static characteristics of high-speed water-lubricated journal bearing considering turbulence and cavitation effects

Abstract

The water-lubricated bearings tend to be turbulent and cavitating when running at a high speed. However, the modeling of the water-lubricated bearing considering the turbulence and cavitation effects has not been studied thoroughly. For high-speed water-lubricated journal bearings, a turbulent flow model considering cavitation effect was proposed on the basis of two-phase flow theory. The simulation was conducted to show the influence of turbulence and cavitation effects on the static characteristics of the water-lubricated journal bearing. The proposed model was validated with the test by using a self-developed experimental setup. The result shows that the turbulence effect has a great impact on static characteristics of bearing, and cavitation effect significantly affects the minimum film thickness and leakage flow rate, while the friction torque is hardly affected by the cavitation effect.