A Thermohydrodynamic Analysis of the Self-Lubricating Bearings Applied in Gear Pumps Using Computational Fluid Dynamics Method

The transient simulation of the journal bearing temperature in the internal gear pumps is hard due to the complicated shaft motion caused by the complicated loads. In this paper, a thermohydrodynamic analysis method, based on dynamic mesh techniques, is presented with the application of the general computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code fluent. This method can simulate the complex whirling orbit induced temperature variation in internal gear pumps and has taken into account the conduction in the rotating and orbiting rotor of a hydrodynamic bearing. A test rig has been built according to the structure of an internal gear pump to carry out the validation. The results show that the model is reliable. The relationship between bearing temperature, leakage, and axial clearance in the internal gear pump has been studied. It is found that the bearing temperature will decrease slightly, while the leakage increases heavily with larger axial clearance. A thermohydrodynamic analysis of the self-lubricating bearing in the internal gear pump has been done based on this method. The results show that the pressure profile changes regularly with the whirling motion of the journal, while the whirling motion has little effect on the distribution of the temperature. Besides, the increase of the whirling radius will result in the decrease of the pressure profile and the increase of the temperature profile.