Effect and optimization of triangular textures on lubrication performance of the thrust bearing

Abstract

To enhance the loading capacity of the oil film and reduce its temperature, this article establishes a thrust bearing model with a triangular texture based on the modified Reynolds equation. The focus is on investigating the influence of texture parameters on both the temperature and pressure fields of the oil film. For the purpose of determining the parameter combination under the best lubrication performance, the improved multi-objective dragonfly algorithm (MODA) based on BP neural network is employed to optimize the temperature and loading capacity of oil film. The investigation revealed that the optimal lubrication performance is achieved with a texture width of approximately 0.23 mm, a texture depth of 0.5 mm, a texture number of 32 and a texture spacing of 5 mm. Under these conditions, when compared with a thrust bearing without texture, the textured thrust bearing increases its loading capacity by approximately 29% and reduces temperature by approximately 1.75 ºC.