Numerical Optimization of Surface Texture for Hydrophobic Textured Slider Bearing

Abstract

To reduce a significant energy waste in industry due to the friction and wear in mechanical components, there is an increasing demand for durable thrust bearing under extreme operational conditions. Surface texturing, combined with the application of hydrophobic material, has been proven to be an effective and economical means to enhance the tribological lubrication performance of sliding surfaces. Therefore, in the present work, an exact optimization method is presented to optimize the surface texture in terms of the texture depth for enhancing the load-carrying capacity. Furthermore, the texture shapes, including ellipse and triangle, are investigated under different arrangements of hydrophobic materials. The lubrication characteristics are established by solving the modified Reynolds equation with means of finite volume method. For modeling the hydrophobic behavior, the critical shear stress model is employed to assure more real boundary conditions of bearing. The simulation results show that for any type of groove shape, the highest load-carrying capacity can be achieved under unique hydrophobic placement. The main interesting finding is the fact that the optimal texture with the groove shape of ellipse shows a better impact on the performance of slider bearing irrespective of the hydrophobic placements.