Calculation of lubricated spiral groove gas thrust bearing using finite volume method

A numerical analysis of lubricated gas spiral groove thrust bearing is presented in this thesis. To avoid the inconvenience of curvilinear boundaries, the coordinate transformation was used to change the spiral groove domain into a sector form. The steady gas Reynolds equations were obtained and solved by finite volume method. The calculation model and numerical algorithm has been validated by comparison of the calculation data with published numerical results from FDM, FEM and analytical method. The results show that the critical load capacity is gained when the spiral angle is in the range of 10° to 15°. With the groove depth decreasing, the load capacity would be increase, however, the friction torque increase to a certain extent. The pressure field of bearing has a few of remarkable features: the largest pressure lies on the ridge-groove boundaries, the pressure gradient gets larger and the pressure is higher with the increase of compressibility number.