TRANSIENT THERMOELASTOHYDRODYNAMIC STUDY OF TILTING-PAD JOURNAL BEARINGS - COMPARISON BETWEEN EXPERIMENTAL-DATA AND THEORETICAL RESULTS

The aim of this paper is to study the increase in temperature of an un loaded tilting-pad journal bearing during rapid start-Lip. First, an a nalysis is carried out to choose an appropriate time step and grid ref inement to minimize numerical errors. Then, the transient THD and TEHD theoretical models are developed to show the influence of solid beari ng deformations. Experimental tests are realized on a four-shoe tiltin g-pad journal bearing. The temperatures at the shaft and pad surfaces, at the half thickness and the back of the pads are compared for both theoretical and experimental investigations. Good agreement is found b etween the theoretical results and the experimental data, especially w hen the variation of the operating bearing clearance is taken into acc ount.