Flow through the Grooves of Journal Bearings

A simple analysis of fully-developed Stokes ow in grooved bearings is performed that does not use lubrication scaling arguments as in Muijderman (1966). When the inertial terms are ignored, the Navier{Stokes equations decouple. The ow through the groove is then determined from a Poisson equation for the only component of velocity that contributes to the ow through the bearing. This velocity is further decoupled into that caused by shaft movement and that caused by the pressure di erence across the bearing. Rectangular groove ow rate predictions are compared to those of Muijderman. Flow rates from semi-circular and irregular groove cross-sections are also presented. Comparison of calculated oil ow for a production-level grooved bearing shows good agreement with experimental measurements from a bench test rig. Present Address: Sta Engineer, Borg-Warner Automotive, Inc., Ithaca, New York 14850