Thermo-hydrodynamic analysis on temperature profile of circular journal bearing using computational fluid dynamics

The model of circular journal bearing has been simulated using the ANSYS Fluent Software which solves 3-Dimensional Navier Stokes and Energy equation for finding the thermal performance characteristics of the bearing instead of solving 2-Dimensional Reynolds Equation. The flow of lubricant is assumed to be laminar and its viscosity varies with the change in the pressure and temperature of the lubricant. The distribution of pressure and temperature throughout the bearing have been obtained by assuming the uniform viscosity i.e. isothermal analysis and by varying viscosity with temperature means Thermo-hydrodynamic Analysis at a eccentricity=0.8 and rotational speed of 2000rpm. It has been found that the rise in temperature is less in thermohydrodynamic analysis as compared to iso-thermal analysis because of the consideration of viscosity variation.