Application of a wall function to simulate turbulent flows in foil bearings at high rotational speeds

• Published in: Tribology international Vol. 115; pp. 546 - 556
• Main Authors: Qin, Kan, Gollan, Rowan J., Jahn, Ingo H.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Kidlington Elsevier Ltd 01.11.2017; Elsevier BV
• Subjects: Checker-boarding; Compressibility; Computational efficiency; Computational fluid dynamics; Computer simulation; Finite element method; Fluid flow; Fluid mechanics; Foil bearings; Foil thrust bearings; Heat flux; High aspect ratio; Lubricants & lubrication; Simulation; Thrust bearings; Turbulence; Turbulent flow; Turbulent simulation; Wall function; Turbulent simulation; Checker-boarding; Foil thrust bearings; Wall function
• ISSN: 0301-679X; 1879-2464
• DOI: 10.1016/j.triboint.2017.06.018

For turbulent simulations in hydrodynamic applications, a fine mesh close to wall boundaries is required to correctly predict the friction and heat fluxes. This results in a remarkable increase of computational cost due to the high aspect ratio cells and reduced allowable time step. To reduce the computational cost, a compressible wall function is introduced and validated with the representative flows. Moreover, high aspect ratio cells lead to simulation instabilities. These spurious oscillations are smoothed through the addition of a fourth-order artificial dissipation term. To verify that the solution accuracy is not affected, the method of manufactured solution is applied. These two additions result in a fast and stable solver for turbulent simulations of foil thrust bearings. •Implementation of efficient solver for turbulent simulations of hydrodynamic lubrications.•Suppression of checker-boarding by implementation of fourth-order artificial dissipation scheme.•Fast and stable computations of turbulent dense gas flows in hydrodynamic foil bearings.•Second order spacial accuracy is maintained.