Analysis of the effect of texturing parameters on the static characteristics of radial rigid bore aerodynamic journal bearings

Abstract Surface texturing has been widely used to improve the performance of bearings. To further investigate the effect of surface morphology on rigid bore aerodynamic journal bearings and to improve the performance of bearings, this paper investigates the effect of surface roughness and surface texture on the static characteristics of radial rigid bore aerodynamic journal bearings using numerical analysis. The compressible Reynolds lubrication equation of the rigid bore aerodynamic journal bearing is solved by Successive Over Relaxation (SOR) and finite difference method. The static performance of the bearings with different parameters was investigated. The parameters that have been studied include the shape of the texture, the depth of the texture, the number of textures, the percentage of textures, and the surface roughness. The results show that radial rigid bore aerodynamic journal bearings with specific parameter textures have 36.32% higher load carrying capacity and 1.66% lower frictional torque compared to the case without texture.