Title: A comparative study for lubrication of surface textured porous journal bearing with two different non-Newtonian fluid models

Authors: Nitin Sharma; Rajesh Kumar Sharma; Sunil; Saurabh Kango

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Hamirpur, (H.P.) – 177005, India ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Hamirpur, (H.P.) – 177005, India ' Department of Mathematics, National Institute of Technology, Hamirpur, (H.P.) – 177005, India ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Hamirpur, (H.P.) – 177005, India

Abstract: A study of two non-Newtonian fluid models viz., power law fluid model and couple stress fluid model on the hydrodynamic lubrication of porous journal bearing has been investigated. In addition, sinusoidal type of surface texturing is incorporated at different configurations on the bearing surface to find the performance of the bearing in both cases. The modified Reynolds equation with Darcy model using Reynolds boundary conditions is solved by central differencing technique of finite difference method. The bearing performance characteristics are calculated numerically and are compared with each other. A direct comparison between the two models has been shown graphically. The power law index (n) has taken in the range 1.0 to 1.2 while couple stress parameter (l*) has taken in the range 0 to 0.6. Numerical results show that both models significantly improve the load carrying capacity (W) and reduce coefficient of friction (COF). The results are more effective for low eccentricity ratios instead of high eccentricity ratios. It has also been observed for surface texturing that configuration 3 (72° to 144°) gives optimum results for both load carrying capacity as well as COF, when compared with all other configurations.

Keywords: power law model; couple stress fluid model; hydrodynamic lubrication; porous journal bearings; surface texturing; non-Newtonian fluids; modelling; load carrying capacity; coefficient of friction.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSURFSE.2016.079045

International Journal of Surface Science and Engineering, 2016 Vol.10 No.5, pp.485 - 502

Received: 29 Jan 2015
Accepted: 22 Sep 2015

Published online: 10 Sep 2016 *

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