Preliminary study on mechanism of cavitation in lubricant of textured sliding bearing

The mechanism of the cavitation in a lubricant of a textured sliding bearing is studied based on multiphase flow theories and tribological equations. First, a physical model for a bearing with a series of semi-spherical dimples is modeled through commercial software ANSYS. Then, influences of dimple position and sizes on the vapor volume fraction, and cavitated area of the bearing are studied with computational fluid dynamic method. Numerical results show that the obvious fluctuation of the vapor volume rate and changes in the starting and end angles of the cavitation region due to varied dimple position can occur, when the dimples are located in the cavitated region. Moreover, with increasing cavitation starting angle, the changing trend of the cavitated area is the same as that of the load-carrying capacity, but opposite to the variation trends of the friction force and further friction coefficient.