An Analysis of the Steady-State Performance of the Cylindrical-Spherical Floating Ring Bearing

A steady-state analysis based on the short bearing approximation is presented for the cylindrical-spherical floating ring bearing, where the inner surface of the ring is cylindrical whilst the outer is spherical. Performance characteristics are compared with Li and Rohde’s theoretical work on the conventional cylindrical-cylindrical bearing. Excellent agreement is obtained, especially for (L/D) = 0.5. The present analysis of both the inner and outer lubricant films, the thickness of the latter varying axially, takes account of striated flow downstream of cavitation inception. The importance of this is demonstrated when considering power loss prediction.