Ferrofluid Lubrication of Optimized Spiral-Grooved Conical Hybrid Journal Bearing Using Current-Carrying Wire Model

To systematically investigate the behavior of fluid film bearing, the determination of optimal parameters is of utmost importance. The core contributions of this article are as follows: (1) modeling of the conical bearing for spiral grooves with ferrofluid lubrication using current-carrying wire model for the fixed coordinate system, (2) deriving the expressions for the magnetic field model and frictional power loss other than Reynolds equation for ferrofluid lubrication, and (3) evaluation of optimal values of spiral-grooved bearing surface for different cross-sectional shapes and that of the current-carrying wire model for magnetic field generation in ferrofluid lubrication. The generalized minimum RESidual iterative solver and the Newton–Raphson method have facilitated the solution of complex nonlinear finite element (FE) formulated governing equations. Initially, the results have been obtained for determining the optimal values of spiral groove and ferrofluid model attributes. After that, using these optimal values, corresponding performance indicators are evaluated. It was found that there exists a optimum value of different geometric features for distinct cross-sectional shapes of spiral grooves.