The Analysis and Performance of Pivoted Pad Journal Bearings Considering Thermal and Elastic Effects

A large number of variables are associated with the design of pivoted pad bearings that makes a generalised approach using charts most difficult. All design offices now have readily available on-line computer terminals that have access to library programs. The development of a library program for this type of bearing is described and discussed. The analysis considers the entire bearing as opposed to the superposition of results of individual pads. This simplifies the solution of the temperature field for each pad and allows the inclusion of turbulence, hot oil carry over and thermal and elastic distortion of each pad. The analysis is verified against three sets of independent experimental results. It is shown that the effect of pad bending is to lower the bearing damping so that the unbalance response is increased.