The Lubrication Performance Research Of Water-lubricated Bearing With Trench Structure

Water lubrication rubber bearing is an important part of a ship propulsion system, has been more and more used in the ship stern tube, submersible pump and other construction machinery. However, in the context of the current situation, the lubrication performance is highly affected by the factors such as bearing structure, the working condition. And in the research on the mechanism of lubrication, there are a lot of difficulties to set up accurate lubrication model, since the water lubricated bearing has longitudinal grooves. At the same time, the rubber also can produce obvious elastic deformation, even under light load, because the low lining elastic modulus, which makes the study for water lubrication rubber bearing mechanism have not get important development and breakthrough. So, we still need a further study on the lubrication mechanism. This paper adopts the method of simulation and experimental to carry on research, and its content mainly includes the following aspects.(1) According to installation clearance, rotational speed and geometric structure of bearing, this paper determines turbulent flow field as the flow state, and establishes the groove water lubrication rubber bearing lubrication model for computing, based on the combination with dynamic pressure lubrication theory and flow-solid coupling theory. Besides it carries on numerical simulation on bearing lubrication model by fluid calculation software of ANSYS FLUENT, and calculates flow field distribution inside the water lubrication rubber bearing with a groove. Then it analysis and contrasts the properties of bearing lubrication, such as water film pressure distribution, velocity distribution, rubber lining deformation distribution, and so on, under different working conditions.(2) In order to further improve the work performance of water lubricated bearing, this paper respectively studies radius of groove, transition arc radius and thickness of the rubber lining to find out each influence on the performance of water lubrication rubber bearing lubrication, which provides a theoretical basis for the stability analysis and structure design.(3) This paper does experiments on water lubricated rubber bearings with specific structure and clearance, and analysis the influence of load, rotational speed and clearance on the friction coefficient. It also contrasts change law of the friction coefficient along with the change of revolving speed in simulation results, which can illustrate that simulation has certain reference significance. At the same time, it gets the best clearance of bearing, and the best bearing clearance design provides the test data.Water lubrication rubber bearing has great significance for our country to develop the "green shipping". But it is not mature enough of its research and application technology, and lubrication performance remains to get a breakthrough. In this paper, the research achievements are limited, but the research methods and results of water lubricated rubber bearings have certain reference value to further improve its work performance.