Title: Investigating lubrication performance in HSCP with sliding-frictional pairs of stepped bearings

Authors: Shun Gong; Yalei Wang

Addresses: School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Henan Vocational University of Science and Technology, Henan, 454000, China ' School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Henan Vocational University of Science and Technology, Henan, 454000, China

Abstract: To ameliorate lubricating in a high-speed-centrifugal pump (HSCP), three various surfaces of sliding-frictional pairs in the pump's bearing, including stepped-surface (SS), inclined-surface (IS), and curved-surface (CS) are researched based on the pump's lubricating model. The effect of ratios of the liquid film thickness and geometric dimension in SS, IS, and CS on the friction and load capacity in the pump's bearing are investigated. These ratios are also optimised to enhance the bearing's lubricating performance. The study shows that ratios of the liquid film thickness and geometric dimension in SS, IS, and CS strongly affect the bearing's friction and load capacity. However, the CS improves the bearing's lubricating performance better than both IS and SS. Especially with the optimised CS, the minimal friction is strongly decreased by 54.5% and the load capacity is increased by 8.6% compared to the SS. Thus, the CS should be applied to improve the lubrication in the centrifugal pump's bearing.

Keywords: centrifugal pumps; lubricating performance; stepped-surface; inclined-surface; curved-surface; optimisation algorithm.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCMSSE.2024.139019

International Journal of Computational Materials Science and Surface Engineering, 2024 Vol.12 No.1, pp.81 - 94

Received: 27 Nov 2023
Accepted: 21 Mar 2024
Published online: 07 Jun 2024 *

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