Elastohydrodynamic lubrication characteristics of surface-textured slipper bearing in an axial piston pump

This paper aimed to reveal elastohydrodynamic lubrication characteristics for surface-textured slipper bearing of axial piston pump. The proposed model was established including slipper-tilting motion and surface deformation. Further, a numerical simulation was conducted under hydrodynamic and elastohydrodyamic lubrication conditions. Numerical solutions were obtained under this lubrication conditions in terms of the film pressure, film thicknesses, and bearing stiffness. The simulation results reveal that the film pressure in EHD solution increases slightly with the growth of the area density within the range of 10–30% and then tends to remain stable. When the area density of dimple is set to 38%, the dimensionless stiffness of oil film shows the highest value. If the dimple depth is set to 0.8 μm, there exists the maximum dimensionless stiffness of oil film in EHD solution when the optimum dimple depth-to-diameter ratio is set to 0.22.