Lubrication Characteristics of Laser Textured Parallel Thrust Bearing : Part 4 - Effect of Dimple Shape

Laser surface texturing (LST) methods are widely applied now to reduce friction and improve reliability of machine components such as thrust bearings, mechanical face seals and piston rings, etc. In this paper, the effect of dimple shapes on the lubrication characteristics of parallel thrust bearing are studied using a commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code, FLUENT. Pressure and streamline distributions, variations of supporting load, leakage flow rate and friction force, are compared for three different dimple sectional shapes such as circle, pyramid and rectangle type. The lubrication characteristics are highly affected by dimple shapes and number of dimples. The pyramid type dimple shape can support the highest load while the rectangle type is the best in friction reduction.