A two-way FSI analysis of multiphase flow in hydrodynamic journal bearing with cavitation

This work deals with a study of a three-dimensional CFD analysis and multi-phase flow phenomena for hydrodynamic journal bearing with integrated cavitation. The simulations are carried out considering the realistic bearing deformations by two-way fluid-structure interactions (FSI) along with cavitation using ANSYS((R))Workbench software. The design optimization module is used to generate the optimized solution of the attitude angle and eccentricity for the combination of operating speed and load. Bearings with and without cavitation are investigated. A drop in maximum pressure value is observed when cavitation is considered in the bearing. The rise in oil vapor distribution is noted with an increase in shaft speed which lowers the magnitude of the pressure build up in the bearing. The bearing deformations are analyzed numerically and found increasing with an increase in shaft speed. The experimental data obtained for pressure distribution showed good agreement with numerical data along with a considerable reduction in computation time.