Innovative Meshing Strategies for Bearing Lubrication Simulations

Efficiency improvement is the new challenge in all fields of design. In this scenario the reduction of power losses is becoming more and more a main concern also in the design of power transmissions. Appropriate models to predict power losses are therefore required from the earliest stages of the de...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inLubricants Vol. 8; no. 4; p. 46
Main Authors Concli, Franco, Schaefer, Christian Thomas, Bohnert, Christof
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Basel MDPI AG 01.04.2020
Subjects
bearing
Bearings
CFD
Computer simulation
Efficiency
Lubricants
Lubricants & lubrication
Lubrication
Meshing
Numerical analysis
Open source software
OpenFOAM
Power loss
Roller bearings
Simulation
Studies
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Summary:Efficiency improvement is the new challenge in all fields of design. In this scenario the reduction of power losses is becoming more and more a main concern also in the design of power transmissions. Appropriate models to predict power losses are therefore required from the earliest stages of the design phase. The aim of this project is to carry out lubrication simulations of several variants of a cylindrical roller bearing to understand the lubricant distribution and the related churning power losses. Several strategies to reduce the computational effort were used. Among them the sectorial symmetry and three innovative meshing strategies (purely analytical with and without interfaces and analytical/subtractive) that were implemented in the OpenFOAM® environment. The results of the different approaches were compared among them and reasonable savings in terms of computational effort were shown.
ISSN:2075-4442
2075-4442
DOI:10.3390/lubricants8040046