Three-dimensional thermohydrodynamic investigation on the micro-groove textures in the main bearing of internal combustion engine for tribological performances

Abstract

A three-dimensional thermohydrodynamic numerical simulation study was used to investigate the impact of the micro-groove surface texturing on the tribological performances in the main bearing of the internal combustion engine. For this purpose, various number of grooves and groove height to the bearing surface were applied to determine the optimal texture surface parameters by comparing the load-carrying capacity and friction force in the engine main bearing. In the multiphysics numerical model, the three-dimensional Navier–Stokes equation was employed considering the cavitation mechanism based on the Elrod method in the solution. Using the transverse grooves on the bearing surface altered the cavitation response and film reformation. To validate the use of the current numerical model for analyzing the bearings, the obtained results were compared with those of the published theoretical papers, where a good agreement was obtained. The bearing performance was studied in thermal interface conditions to find the optimal set textures parameters that gave minimum fiction force with minimum loss in load-carrying capacity. The bearing with the optimal micro-groove texture parameter showed a reduction in friction (around 16%) with the minimum reduction in load-carrying capacity (around 6%) and the maximum reduction of the flow work (around 15%) compared with the untextured bearing surface. This paper focuses on the thermohydrodynamic investigation with a combination of thermal effects of the fluid film in the textured bearing. Meanwhile, the heat transfer characteristic, temperature distribution of solid bodies, and convection heat transfer coefficient in the contact surfaces of the textured bearing were investigated. The proposed multiphysics numerical model can be widely used for predicting the optimal texture surface parameters in different engineering systems modeling. Moreover, using the three-dimensional-based numerical model is more cost-effective compared with the experimental evaluation of the textured surface.

Tribological behavior of laser textured rolling element bearings under starved lubrication

“…Thereinto, ST has proved to be a fast, cost-effective and easily controlled means to tune the friction and wear properties of various mechanical parts through fabricating some macro/micro-units (e.g. pillar, dimple, groove and grid) distributed in a periodic geometry or pattern on the target surface (Koike et al , 2015; Menezes, 2016; Lu et al , 2018; Gachot et al , 2017; Uddin and Liu, 2016; Galda et al , 2019; Wang et al , 2019; Ahmadkhah and Kakaee, 2021; Gropper et al , 2018; Grützmacher et al , 2021). Meanwhile, some new textures and multi-scale surface patterns were also introduced and studied (Long et al , 2021b; Grützmacher et al , 2019).…”

Three-dimensional thermohydrodynamic analysis of the effects of textured main bearing on lubricant density and viscosity in internal combustion engines

“…Figure 1(a) displays the thermal boundary conditions in the solid shaft, while Figure 1(b) and (e) illustrates the numerical boundary conditions in the fluid film with 19 transverse grooves on the lower semi-surface of the bearing in numerical simulations. 17 The thermal insulation boundary condition (∂T /∂Z = 0) was used for the sidewalls of the solid shaft and bearing. In Figure 1(c) and (d), the view of the transverse grooves with boundary conditions is presented.…”

Effect of surface micro-groove texture on lubrication performance of tripod universal coupling

“…Researchers used different methods to optimise the texture design (Zhang et al , 2018). Ahmadkhah and Kakaee (2021) used a multiphysical numerical model to predict the optimal surface texture parameters and verified the accuracy of the model through experiments. Chen et al (2018) developed and optimised the non-conductive texture of diamond-like and mimicing shark skin, which greatly improved the friction and responsiveness of the hydraulic cylinder.…”