Study of annular recess hydrostatic tilted thrust pad bearing under the influence of couple stress lubricant behaviour

This paper concerns with the theoretical investigation to predict the combined influence of couple stress lubricant and tilt between bearing pad surfaces, on the performance of externally pressurised annular recess thrust pad bearing. Stokes micro-continuum theory is used to derive modified Reynolds equation accounting for the presence of couple stress additives in lubricant. A MATLAB code has been developed to solve the governing equation using FEM technique. Influence of annular recess location and tilt between pad surfaces are investigated on the performance of hydrostatic thrust pad bearing. It has been observed that the use of couple stress lubricant significantly improves the performance of annular recessed hydrostatic thrust pad bearing. Presence of tilt between bearing surfaces proved to be beneficial in terms of dynamic characteristics of bearing system.