Flow Parameters in Hydrostatic Lubrication for Several Bearing Shapes

In the case of hydrostatic lubrication the designer of thrust bearings has to make decisions regarding the shape of pads, location of oil holes, and configuration of oil grooves. In this paper several pad shapes and associated oil inlets were investigated using conformal mapping techniques to obtain the total load-carrying capacity, flow rate of oil, oil-film thickness, pressure and velocity distribution. The results of these calculations permit the designer to approximate his chosen configuration by computed models in order to estimate the flow parameters.