Influence of surface textures on the hydrodynamic performance of parallel sliding contacts in turbulent regime

Abstract

Generally, turbulent flow in bearings occurs mainly due to two reasons: high operational speed and use of unconventional lubricants. The present work is focused to investigate the effects of both positive and negative textures in terms of texture shape, size, height, orientation and number of textures in transverse direction, on the hydrodynamic performance of parallel sliding contacts in turbulent regime. Ng and Pan model is used to incorporate turbulent flow condition in pressure governing equation. It has been noticed that Reynolds number, texture shape, size and height play significant role in enhancing the lubrication performance. In turbulent flow, friction parameter shows higher magnitude as compared to laminar flow which is undesirable.