Design of herringbone grooved thrust bearing for locomotive turbocharger rotor

Abstract

The herringbone texture exhibited excellent tribological performance to minimize friction and wear. However, the application of this texture in the development of grooved thrust bearings is limited. Therefore, in this study, an attempt was made to design an oil-lubricated herringbone grooved thrust bearing for high-speed locomotive turbochargers. The designed bearing accommodates the axial load generated due to the pressure difference between the turbine and compressor wheel. The bearing design starts with applying Newton's second law to predict the thrust load acting on the locomotive turbocharger rotor. The thrust load is calculated analytically and is found to be 4.54 kN for a design rotor speed of 1,00,000 rpm. Further, the herringbone grooved thrust bearing has been modeled numerically using non-linear Reynold's equation. The modified Reynolds equation is discretized using the finite volume method (FVM) and solved by successive over-relaxation (SOR) methodology to determine the static characteristics over the bearing surface. The developed HGTB is found to have a suitable load-carrying capacity of 4.6 kN, frictional torque of 0.25 N.m, and power loss of 2.98 kW. Further, a parametric analysis has been carried out to study the influence of design parameters such as the number of grooves, helix angle, angular groove width, groove depth, and speed on load-carrying capacity, frictional torque, and power loss.