The effect of surface texture on the oil film lubrication performance of hydrostatic thrust bearings

Hydrostatic thrust bearings are critical components of the support system in mechanical machining equipment. Fabricating surface textures on their working surfaces can significantly enhance the lubrication performance of the clearance oil film. This paper takes the clearance oil film of hydrostatic thrust bearings as the research object, employing Ansys CFX to conduct simulations and analyze the lubrication performance of the oil film at the oil sealing edge with non-textured, rectangular, triangular, and trapezoidal surface textures. The effects of texture shape, size, and quantity distribution on the lubrication performance of the clearance oil film were investigated. The results demonstrate that, when comprehensively considering the bearing capacity and temperature rise characteristics of the oil film, the introduction of textures on the downstream side of the oil sealing edge can effectively improve the bearing capacity of the clearance oil film, while inducing nearly no change in its temperature rise. Among the textures studied, the triangular texture demonstrated the best performance in enhancing oil film lubrication, followed by the trapezoidal texture, while the rectangular texture exhibited slightly inferior performance. In addition, a parametric study on the number and dimensional parameters of the triangular texture was conducted, and the optimal triangular texture parameter set for maximizing the oil film lubrication performance was obtained.