STUDY ON THE EFFECT OF AERATED LUBRICANT ON THE JOURNAL TRACES IN THE ENGINE BEARING CLEARANCE

This work analyzes the behaviors of aerated lubricant in the gap between con-rod bearing and journal. It is assumed that the film formation with aerated lubricant is influenced by the two major factors. One is the density characteristics of the lubricant due to the volume change of lubricant for the formation of bubbles and the other is the viscosity characteristics of the lubricant due to the surface tension of the bubble in the lubricant. These two major factors surprisingly increase the load capacity in some ranges of bubble sizes and densities. Modified Reynolds' equation is developed for the computation of fluid film pressure with the effects of aeration ratio in the lubricant. From the calculated load capacity by solving modified Reynolds' equation, journal locus is computed with Mobility method after comparing it with the applied load at each time step. The differences of journal orbits between aerated and pure lubricants are shown in the computed results.