| Abstract | Fluid film bearings are widely used industrially with designs usually based on static performance characteristics. Recently, demands for increases in rotating equipment performance have led to the need for more accurate prediction techniques, including dynamic bearing behaviour. Analytical methods used to determine dynamic bearing characteristics have usually involved large finite difference or finite element analyses. As yet, very limited generalized data is available and most programs are proprietary. Further, direct experimental confirmation of these programs is very difficult and of limited reliability.
One Canadian company has recently developed a finite element bearing calculation method and the associated computer program has been made available to NRC for internal research purposes. The program has been adapted to suit the NRC computer system.
Several other Canadian industries are developing or adapting programs for the same purpose and have expressed an interest in a mutual comparison of performance prediction results. This report is the initiation of such a comparison which will help the participants to confirm the range of applicability of their own calculation methods. A comparison will determine if significant areas of discrepancy exist and thus outline any need for corrective work or experimental confirmation.
As a first step, several types of fluid film bearings have been analysed by the computer program now on line at NRC. The results have been both plotted and tabulated along with reference data compiled by this laboratory (refs. 1 and 2). When available, more data, experimental or analytical, on other types and configurations of bearings will be added to the data base described in this report. |
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