Abstract：A numerical model of elastohydrodynamic lubrication considering thermal and transient effects for seawater-lubricated plastic bearings subjected to impact load is built. The distributions of lubricating film pressure and film thickness are obtained by numerical simulation by using the multi-grid method for pressure, the multi-integration method for deformation and the column scanning method for temperature rise. The characteristics of variation with time of central pressure, central film thickness and minimum film thickness are analyzed when the bearing is subjected to continuous impact loads, such as sine pulse and triangular pulse, and the influences of load amplitude and pulse width on pressure and film thickness are discussed. Numerical results reveal that the variation period of pressure is in the same of that of the impact load, but variation of the film thickness lags behind the variations of the load and the pressure. With the increase of the load amplitude, the amplitudes of the pressure and film thickness increase, the symmetric line of the central pressure moves down, the symmetric line of the film thickness moves up. The maximum value of the central pressure becomes higher, and the minimum value of the minimum film thickness turns smaller when the pulse width increases.
2013, Vol. 32 
