Steady State Performance of a Hydrodynamic Journal Bearing With a Pseudoplastic Lubricant

Starting from the general shear stress-shear strain relation of the odd cubic polynomial type considering correlation effect for pseudoplastic (shear thinning) lubricant, a modified form of Reynolds’ equation (nonlinear) is derived under conventional hydrodynamic lubrication approximations. The finite difference technique with successive over relaxation is used adopting the solution of the associated linear equation as a first approximation to obtain the pressure distribution of a finite cylindrical journal bearing incorporating Reynolds’ boundary conditions. Steady state performance characteristics such as load capacity, attitude, friction and flow rate are obtained for various values of nonlinear parameter and bearing slenderness ratio. The results presented in nondimensional form are compared with established results for Newtonian lubricants. The investigation shows a significant effect of correlation on the bearing load capacity and flow rate.