Determination of the dynamic behavior of an elasto-hydrodynamic bearing

For industrial applications a lot of process know-how and a good understanding of the dynamic behavior of all the individual components and overall mechanical systems are of high importance. Usually, the systems parameters describing the relevant behavior have been determined through extensive technical experiments for using the results in complex simulation models. In many cases a more flexible and efficient method is to set up appropriate mathematical models and to extract the required parameters from them. In this paper a model for a special hydrodynamic bearing will be presented, which has been developed for industrial applications. Furthermore, the present paper will show some advantages of implementing separate modules for the physical characteristics of a hydrodynamic bearing. Under certain conditions it is possible to calculate the deformation of the mechanical components and the pressure of the lubricant within the bearings gap independently. Following with a procedure for the automatically creation of the Finite Element models according to the given guidelines and the method to reproduce surface deformations by influence matrices. Finally, the paper describes the identification of the dynamic behavior of a hydrodynamic bearing by numerically solving of the equilibrium-state between the pressure distribution and the mechanical deformations.