PROJECT TITLE

Hydrodynamic Lubrication Analysis of Journal Bearings

SUPERVISOR
Dr. Dana Grecov
Department of Mechanical Engineering
University of British Columbia
Vancouver, BC Canada

By

Mayank Dubey
 BRIEF OVERVIEW

The oil and gas industry is currently employing more than 50,000 people only in Canada and more than 4
million all over the world. Oil companies dedicate a large proportion of their research and development
efforts towards reducing emissions. Emissions from transportation vehicles of all types constitute the
largest single contributor to the emission of green house gases in Canada and are expected to have the
largest growth rate over the next two decades. The minimization of the green house gases to the levels
set by Kyoto protocol and now Copenhagen can only be achieved by efficient and responsible use of the
resources and through innovative design which includes an optimal design of better lubricant is one of
the steps in achieving the bigger objective.

Lubrication is the technique employed to reduce wear of close surfaces with relative movement to each
other. The most commonly used lubricant is liquid which can carry the applied load mainly by the
pressure generated within the fluid due to the frictional viscous resistance to the motion of lubricating
fluid between the surfaces. Experiments have shown that addition of small amounts of long-chained
polymer additives to a Newtonian fluid produces desirable lubricants. Additives added to oil make fluid
visco-elastic. The effect of visco-elesticity on lubrication characteristics has recently taken on added
significance with the move to yet lower viscosity lubricants for improved efficiency. Any factor
influencing load bearing capacity and wear is clearly of renewed importance, and there are therefore
good practical reasons to investigate the general question of visco-elastic effects in lubrication.

Machine has increased in complexity and technology to achieve higher production levels and expand the
work under more severe operating conditions. These factors result in higher operating speeds, severe
climate conditions and greater lubrication temperatures leading to better required lubrication
performances. Along with increased environmental demands, higher safety requirements, and more
maintenance-free operations, the research in this field has gained importance.
There are many challenges in developing the lubricant of the future. The study of journal bearing
lubrication has, over the years, generated much interest from major oil industries, engine manufacturers
and machinery alike. In these applications it is important to assess and predict the performance of
lubricant within a journal bearing with respect to wear and efficiency under a wide range of operating
conditions.

Even though the mineral based lubricants are dominating the lubricant market and can satisfy most
performance requirements in various lubrication systems, they still encounter many problems in the
future. The world now consumes in 6 weeks the amount of lubricants that was consumed in a full year in
1950 and at this rate mineral based lubricants, which are made from petroleum(and are non
renewable), will be consumed in 50 years. An emerging class of lubricants – bio-lubricants is a good
substitute of mineral based lubricants. Bio-lubricants made from vegetable oils are renewable, non-toxic
and non-polluting and 85 % of applications can be met by lubricants from bio-refinery. The demand and
application of bio-lubricants are greatly increasing.

Today’s challenge is to increase the lubrication efficiency and to reduce the gas emissions by improving
the design of the existing lubricants or to design new environmentally friendly lubricants. Before
lubricants are selected, they should be assessed over a wide range of dynamic operating conditions
which is an expansive and time consuming process. The modeling and simulation process to predict the
flow of the lubricant in a journal bearing can generate important economic benefits and may even lead
to advanced predictive tools that can be used to improve the design of journal bearings and to propose
new economically viable and environmentally friendly lubricants.

The work that has been done was mainly concerned with the “Rheological Characterization” of fluids.
When working with the Lubricants (which are non-Newtonian) the shear stress, shear strain rate, and
the temperature in the whole volume of the fluid have to be constant, otherwise a mean values over the
range of shear rates and temperatures appearing in the viscometer will be obtained. The only possibility
of doing basic rheology measurements on non-Newtonian fluids is to have same shear rates and shear
stress throughout the entire volume. This leads to basically two possible rhemometer geometries; they
are concentric cylinder viscometer and cone and plate geometry. The results obtained were helpful in
determining the rheological characteristics of the fluids.