Analysis of Turbulent Bearing Films

Abstract

In studying the performance of laminar bearing films one need give little attention to the details of the internal flow. The velocity distribution is so simply related to the pressure gradient that one is able almost immediately to concentrate on the pressure distribution. But for a turbulent film the situation is quite different. No simple laws are known relating the volume flow through the film to the pressure gradient and relative velocity. A thorough study of the motion within turbulent films must be made before their characteristics as bearing films can be assessed. Thus this work falls into two parts. In Part I the basic analysis of two-dimensional turbulent channel flows is given. The application of its results to bearing analysis is treated in Part II.