Lubrication Characteristics of Laser Textured Parallel Thrust Bearing : Part 3 - Effect of Number of Dimples

Laser surface texturing (LST) methods are widely applied recently to reduce friction and improve reliability of machine components such as thrust bearings, mechanical face seals and piston rings, etc. In this paper, numerical analysis is carried out to investigate the effect of number of dimples on the lubrication characteristics of parallel thrust bearing using a commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code, FLUENT. Pressure distributions of present analysis are physically consistent than those obtained from numerical analysis of Reynolds equation. The overall lubrication characteristics are highly affected by number of dimples and their locations. The results can be use in design of optimum dimple characteristics to improve thrust bearing performance and further researches are required.