Experimental study on the effect of surface texture on the dynamic performance of journal bearing

Growing attention has been paid to surface texture owing to its significance on bearing lubrication, load capacity and wear resistance. In this paper, in order to learn more about the dynamic performance of journal bearings and the vibration of bearing housing, a comparative experimental study between textured surface and non-textured surface journal bearing configurations is presented. The research was mainly divided into two parts. Firstly, the feature information of displacement under a range of loads from 0 N to 2500 N was obtained. Experimental measurements data of stiffness coefficients and damping coefficients under different static loads were calculated and analyzed respectively between the surface-textured and non-textured journal bearings. It can be learned that the values of fluid film stiffness coefficients and damping coefficients are increased via surface texture. Secondly, the vibration amplitude of bearing housing was measured. The experimental results show that appropriate texture distribution can certainly have better vibration damping effects according to acceleration amplitude. There is a good correlation under the relevant operating conditions compared with a theoretical model. The experimental results show that the appropriate texture distributed journal bearing provides a great improvement on stability than the non-textured journal bearing.