Paper No: TSI812535 CFD INVESTIGATION OF CAVITATION IN FLUID FILM JOURNAL BEARING SYSTEM R. K.

Awasthi , Harpuneet Singh , Sandeep Devgan , Raman Kumar , Amit Mahajan Department of Mechanical Engineering Beant College of Engineering and Technology, Gurdaspur (Punjab) 143521 # Professor, *Postgraduate students awasthi.rka@gmail.com ABSTRACT Cavitation is commonly occurred phenomenon in liquid lubricated bearings and thus important to consider its effect on performance prediction. In order to ascertain the extent to which gaseous cavitation affects the performance of journal bearing system, this paper investigates the Jacobson and Floberg (JFO) theory, and uses Elrod algorithm for dealing cavitation effect. A finite difference based CFD method is used for solving mass conservation equation. Under the steady state condition, a two dimensional finite difference equation is solved using alternating direction implicit (ADI) method. The solution domain is discretised in a uniform grid for a finite journal bearing. After each sweep of the grid, the switch function at all grid points are updated based on fractional film distribution. The process is repeated iteratively till the specified convergence is achieved. The solution domain is discretised in a uniform grid for a finite journal bearing. Computer code is developed in Fortran 90 for computing performance parameters which includes maximum pressure, minimum film thickness, friction coefficient, centre of pressure, eccentricity ratio, Sommerfeld number, attitude angle and stiffness coefficients etc. The simulated results are tested and compared with the published work, which are quite comparable, and thus predicts the accuracy of the code.
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INTRODUCTION In a typical cylindrical journal bearing within the converging film region, the hydrodynamic pressure rises to a peak, decreasing to ambient pressure at the end sides and trailing edge of the thin film. In zones where the film thickness locally increases, the fluid pressure may drop to ambient, thus releasing the dissolved gases within the lubricant, or below ambient to its vapor pressure causing lubricant vaporization. The phenomenon of film rupture is known as lubricant cavitation.[1].The objective of the current paper is to know the extent upto which cavitation affects the performance of a circular journal bearing while in operation.The cavitation zone is computed using Jacobson Floberg and Osslen theory [2] , which assumes that the liquid film is composed of two distinct parts namely full film region and cavitated region. The theory satisfy the mass conservation and require that the pressure gradient vanishes on the ruptured boundaries and become negative on the reformation of the boundaries.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION The mass conservation equation in 2-D space is solved into finite difference form using Elrod algorithm [4]. A computational grid 72 10 is chosen as optimal grid. The iteration for computation of fractional film content is made till a suitable convergence criteria is met. At a selected value of eccentricity, a specified value of attitude angle is selected using Newtons Method. The simulated results for a specified value of = 1.0 has been plotted and compared with the published results [5] as shown in figure 1.The results compared well and thus shows the accuracy of the developed code.

Ref.[5] 1 0.9
E c c . R a t i o

present work

0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0 0.001 0.01 0.1 1

Sommerfeld Number

Fig. 1 Sommerfeld number versus eccentricity ratio

for a circular journal bearing

Fig. 2 Eccenctricity ratio versus attitude angle

Min.film thickness Max pressure 1 Min.film thickness 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0 0 0.5
Eccentricity ratio

cof 100 90 80 70 c 60 o 50 f 40 30 20 10 0 0 0.5

Eccentricity ratio

cop 294 292 290 c 288 o p 286 284 282 1

120 100 80 60 40 20 0 1 Max.pressure

Fig.3 Eccentricity ratio versus film thickness and pressure

Fig.4 Eccentricity versus coefficient of friction & centre of pressure

Sxx Syx 2000 1500

Stiffness

Sxy Syy 1.8 1.6 1.4 1.2 1 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0 0

pressure

1000 500 0 -500 -1000 0 0.5 1

pressure distribution

Eccentricity Ratio

200
Angular position ( degrees)

400

Fig.5 Stiffness versus Eccentricity ratio

Fig. 6 Pressure distribution versus Angular position at = 0.5

The variation of non dimension parameters have been shown for a wide range of eccentricity ratios (0 0.95) in Fig 2-5. Figure 2 shows the variation of attitude angle versus eccentricity ratio. It may be observed that the attitude angle decreases with the increase in eccentricity ratios. Figure 3 shows the variations of the minimum film thickness and maximum pressure, indicating a very high value of maximum pressure at extreme value of eccentricity ratio. The simulated data of friction parameter and load carrying capacity of the bearing is high at high eccentricities, however the degree of variation of friction is low compared to degree of variation of load carrying capacity, therefore the coefficient of friction (COF) term is reducing with the increase in eccentricity ratio as may be seen in Fig. 4. The centre of pressure (COP) location corresponding to circumferential direction in Fig. 4 indicating the shifting of journal towards the lowermost vertical plane which is also being reflected with the attitude angle, decreases with the increase of eccentricity ratio. The dynamic performance parameters have been indicated in terms of stiffness coefficients, which are having a very high value at higher eccentricities. It may be observed that the stiffness coefficient in the vertical direction (s yy) is quite large, indicating better stabilities of the system. The pressure distribution corresponding to 0.5 eccentricity ratio has been shown in Fig. 6. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT The authors wish to acknowledge the financial support of the All India Council for Technical Education under RPS grant No. 8023/ BOR/RID/RPS-21/2008-2009.

REFERENCES 1. Dowson.D.and Taylor. C,M., Cavitation in Bearings, Ann. Rev. of Fluid Mech. H, Annual Reviews,Palo Alto, CA pp.35-66 (1979). 2. Jakobsson B . and Floberg.L, The Finite Journal Bearings Considering Vaporization Chalmers Tekniska Hoegskolas Handlingar, 190, pp 1-116, 1957 3. Olosson K.O Cavitaion in Dynamically Loaded Bearings Chalmers University of Technology , Globerg (1965) 4. Elrod, H. G., A Cavitation Algorithm, Trans. of the ASME, J . Lubric. Tech., Vol. 103, pp. 350354, July 1981. 5. Kumar Vaidyanathan and Theo.G. Keith.Jr Numerical Prediction of Cavitation in Journal Bearings Vol. 32, 2 , pp. 215 - 224 (1989) Tribology transactions