Modelling of Micro Textured Bearings With Mass-Conserving Cavitation: A Two Dimensional Problem

There has recently been much interest in the micro-texturing of slider bearings, where many tiny micro-pockets are incorporated into one of the bearing surfaces. Proponents of this technology have reported that the application of micro-texture to sliding bearing surfaces can result in up to 40% reduction in friction, when the two bearing surfaces have low or zero convergence ratio, i.e. are near parallel [1]. The authors have shown previously, through a series of one dimensional analyses, that the ability of such bearings to generate load support can be explained by a lubrication mechanism termed “Inlet Suction” [2, 3]. In the current paper, these one dimensional analyses are extended to two dimensions with the inclusion of a mass-conserving cavitation algorithm based on Elrod [4]. This allows for a more complete understanding of “Inlet Suction” in real bearing geometries.