Numerical evaluation of multilobe bearings using the spectral method

Abstract

Hydropower rotors and pumps have the specificity to be oriented vertically, meaning that the bearing forces have to be evaluated at each time-step depending on the position of the rotor for dynamical analyses. If the bearing forces cannot be evaluated analytically, a suitable numerical method should be used to calculate the pressure distribution over the bearing domain. This process can be computationally expensive as it should be performed for each discrete time-step. As a result, a comparison between the spectral method, the finite difference method, and the finite element method is performed to investigate which method is more adapted to dynamical analysis of the bearing. It is observed that the spectral method has the advantage of having a reasonable simulation time for any eccentricity magnitude with a moderate number of interpolation points. However, this method should be restricted to simple bearing models such as plain bearings or multilobe bearings due to the advantage of finding a global numerical solution directly on the entire bearing/pad domain.