ELASTO-HYDRODYNAMIC LUBRICATION OF CENTRALLY PIVOTED THRUST-BEARINGS

Textbooks on lubrication show that a centrally pivoted hydrodynamic pl ane slider bearing can carry no load, and imply that in practical bear ings the pivot must be offset. In practice offset pivots are the excep tion. This is attributed in the technical literature to a complex comb ination of thermal and elastic distortions. We show that operation is in principle possible purely as the result of the hydrodynamic pressur es bending the pad to a desirable shape. Calculations for a wide pad s uggest that successful operation requires only that a parameter (p) ov er bar l(4)/(Elh(min)) lie within the very wide range 20-330.