Thermal Elastohydrodynamic Lubrication Performance Of Circular Elastic Metal Plastic Pad Thrust Bearing

In recent years,elastic metal plastic pad thrust bearings are widely used in hydraulic equipment such as hydroelectric generating sets,ship transmissions,water pump units and large mining excavators.Compared with the traditional babbitt thrust bearing,the elastic metal plastic pad thrust bearing has the advantages of small friction coefficient,good self-lubricating performance and strong heat insulation.It has successfully replaced the babbitt thrust bearing in some fields.This paper takes the circular elastic metal plastic tile thrust bearing at the central support as the research object.Firstly,the ma thematical model of fluid lubrication of the bearing is established,and the boundary conditions of each basic equation are determined.The finite element method is used to solve the above mathematical model.Secondly,the FORTRAN computer language is used to compile the bearing lubrication performance calculation program.Then the temperature field and pressure field outputted by the bearing lubrication performance calculation program are substituted into the ANSYS finite element software for simulation analysis;a suitable initial pad surface of bearing is optimized design by the analys is result,and the optimal size of init ial pad surface is determined based on the minimum oil film thickness lubrication performance parameter;the bearing lubrication performance calculation program is used to calculate and analyze the influence of the thickness of the elastic composite layer,the thickness of the steel base layer,the load and the rotational speed on the bearing lubrication performance under various working condit ions.Finally,experiments were carried out,a circular plastic pad compression elastic modulus test experiment;a circular plastic pad body temperature test experiment and a circular plastic pad and a circular babbitt pad load start comparison experiment.The research results show that the oil film pressure causes the pad surface to be concavely deformed,the oil film temperature causes the pad surface to be convexly deformed,and the surface of plastic pad is deformed into a concave deformation.In order to improve the appearance of pad surface,an init ial bearing profile with central convex shape was designed to counteract the poor deformation,and the optimal repair size of the bearing pad was determined,which significantly improved the thermal elastohydrodynamic performance.The results also show that the thickness of the elastic composite layer has a significant influence on the thermal elastohydrodynamic lubrication performance of the bearing;the thickness of the steel base layer has little effect on the maximum oil film temperature of bearings,which can be neglected.It has been found through experiments that the elastic modulus of the circular plastic pad is not a fixed constant,and its load-starting performance is significantly better than that of the babbitt pad.