Lubrication Analysis of Floating Ring Bearings Considering Floating Ring Heat Transfer

Turbochargers improve performance in internal combustion engines. Due to low production costs, TC assemblies are supported on floating ring bearings. In current lubrication analysis of floating ring bearing, inner and outer oil film are usually supposed to be adiabatic. The heat generated by frictional power is carried out by the lubricant flow. In reality, under real operating conditions, there existed heat transfer between the inner and outer film. In this paper, the lubrication performance of floating ring bearing when considering heat transfer between inner film and outer film is studied. The lubrication model of the floating ring is established and the heat transferred through the ring between the inner and outer film is calculated. The calculation results show that heat flow between the inner and outer film under different outer film eccentricity ratio and rotate ratio has a large difference. The rotate speed also has an obvious effect on the lubrication of the floating ring bearing. When heat transfer of the floating ring is considered, lubrication performance is changed obviously. There is a good agreement between the results predicted by the calculation model in this paper and some of the published experimental data.