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This study investigates the performance of elastohydrodynamic inclined fixed pad thrust bearing with ultra low clearance. The analysis was conducted using a multiscale approach by considering the surface elastic deformation, the physical adsorption layer and the fluid piezo-viscous effect. Numerical calculations reveal that in this bearing the magnitude of the surface elastic deformation is comparable to both the surface separation and the adsorption layer thickness. Compared to the case of rigid bearing surfaces, the surface elastic deformation results in a significant reduction of the maximum hydrodynamic pressure in the bearing. For a given speed and load, when the fluid-bearing surface interaction is stronger, the influence of the surface elastic deformation on the bearing pressure is more significant. For different surface materials with quite different Young’s modulus of elasticity, when the load and speed are given, the distributions of the film pressure and the surface separation in the bearing are obviously different. For a given load, the surface elastic deformation results in the reduction of the minimum surface separation. For a given minimum surface separation, the increase of the load with the sliding speed is more rapid for rigid bearing surfaces than for elastic bearing surfaces.
Wang et al. (Tue,) studied this question.