Calculation methods of lubricant film pressure distribution of radial grooved thrust bearings

In order to calculate the pressure distribution of radial grooved thrust bearing, analytical and numerical methods were applied respectively. Grooved region and land region were linked by using the mass conservations principle at the groove/land boundary in each method. The block-weight approach was implemented to deal with the non-coincidence of mesh and radial groove pattern in numerical method. It was observed that the numerical solutions had higher precision as mesh number exceed 70×70, and the relaxation iteration of differential scheme presented the fastest convergence speed when relaxation factor was close to 1.94.