Parameter Study on Dynamic Characteristics of Wave Joumal Bearings

The wave journal bearing was first reported by Dimofte in the early 1990's. The purpose of this literature is to study the dynamic behavior of a hydrodynamic wave journal bearing with geometry parameters. It is found that the dynamic performance is related to the design parameters including eccentricity ratio, wave number, wave amplitude ratio and wave position angle. The critical mass which indicates the stability of the bearing was also analyzed by the numerical method. The results obtained from the numerical analysis shows that the dynamic characteristics of the wave bearing could prefer a better performance and stability compares to the plain journal bearing under the certain operating conditions except the wave amplitude ratio is less than 0.05. The wave amplitude ratio plays an essential role on the wave bearing's stability performance. The critical mass jumps rapidly as the wave amplitude increases. The wave position angle of the wave bearing with a periods of 360/n_w relies to the applied load effects the bearing's stability. It should be careful to determine the position angle for the particular wave amplitude ratio. The wave bearing's dynamic stability is significantly influenced by the wave number. Based on an overall consideration of various factors, a wave number of 2 is suitable for the small wave amplitude ratio.