Influence of Geometrical Shape on the Lubrication Performance of Partially Micro-Grooved Gas-Lubricated Parallel Slider Bearings

Abstract

The influence of grooving parameters and micro-groove cross-section shape on the lubrication performance of partially micro-grooved gas-lubricated parallel slider bearings is investigated in the present study. The solution procedure for the multi-grid finite element method is that the algebraic equations formed by the finite element method are in turn smoothed by the interpolation from the coarse grid to the fine grid and the restriction from the fine grid to the coarse grid. By adopting the multi-grid finite element method, the pressure distribution of partially micro-grooved gas-lubricated parallel slider bearings is obtained. The grooving parameters are optimized to obtain the maximum average pressure for different micro-groove cross-section shapes. The results show that the orientation angle of the micro-grooves, depth of the micro-grooves, width of the micro-grooves, area density of the micro-grooves, micro-grooved fraction, and cross-section shape of the micro-grooves have an important influence on the hydrodynamic pressure of partially micro-grooved gas-lubricated parallel slider bearings. The results of this study demonstrate that the lubrication performance of partially micro-grooved gas-lubricated parallel slider bearings can be obviously enhanced by adopting the appropriate grooving parameters and micro-groove cross-shape. The results of this study is beneficial for the design of partially micro-grooved gas-lubricated parallel slider bearings.