A Study on Force and Lubrication Characteristics of Ball Piston in Eccentric Ball Piston Pump

Ball piston is an essential design element in eccentric ball piston pump. The objective of this paper is to investigate the dynamic force and lubrication characteristics of the ball piston. In this study, a tribodynamic model of the ball piston is proposed. The model couples the elastohydrodynamic lubrication model of ball–ring pair and the elastohydrodynamic model of ball–cylinder pair with the dynamic model of the ball piston. The interaction between tribological behavior and dynamic performance and the effects of centrifugation and structural deformation of the ball piston are considered. The pressure distributions and film profiles of the ball–ring pair and ball–cylinder pair are calculated. The dynamic normal contact forces and friction forces are analyzed. The friction torque loss and mechanical efficiency of the whole pump are obtained by combing the tribodynamic model of the ball piston with a simplified friction torque model of cylinder-valve shaft pair. A test bench is established for validating the simulation results. The results show that the normal contact force of the ball–ring pair waves in each stroke, and in discharge stroke, the contact force is much bigger than that in suction stoke because of loading force, while the friction force changes very little for the ball sliding in the outer ring. Comparing with the average friction force of the ball–ring pair, the average friction force of the ball–cylinder pair is small, which reflects that the ball–ring pair is more prone to wear. For the ball–ring friction pair, when the load increases, the secondary contact pressure peak appears, the profile of film presents a horseshoe shape, and the classical shrinkage appears at the outlet of contact region. For the ball–cylinder pair, the film pits and the contact pressure jumps at the entrance of contact region for the heavy load and the high shear stain of film. In addition, the friction torque presents a nonlinear growth trend with the increasing working pressure