How to calculate Friction force for Journal Bearing ?

After the formation of Reynold's equation for journal bearing, we discretised it and found the pressure and load variation.

Now, How can we use matlab to find the friction force for the journal bearing using the discretised pressure equation ?

[Sam Chak]

@Pratyush, could you please provide the mathematical formula for the friction force? This will help us figure out how to compute it in MATLAB.

Answer 1

[Varun]

Hi Pratyush,

I understand that you have discrete pressure variation for journal bearing and you want to find the friction force for the journal bearing using it.

Please refer to the following example code snippet with dummy values:

% Define your discretized pressure distribution (P) and other parameters
% ...

% Calculate the load by integrating pressure over the bearing area
bearing_area = pi * bearing_radius^2; % Assuming a circular bearing
total_load = sum(sum(P)) * bearing_area;

% Define the coefficient of friction (μ) based on your system's properties
coefficient_of_friction = 0.1; % Adjust as needed

% Calculate the friction force
friction_force = coefficient_of_friction * total_load;

% Display the result
fprintf('Friction Force: %.2f N\n', friction_force);

The formula "bearing_area = pi * bearing_radius^2" for the bearing area assumes that the bearing is a simple circular journal bearing with a flat surface. In some cases, journal bearings may have more complex geometries, such as curved surfaces or contours. In such situations, the calculation of the bearing area would be more involved, and you would need to account for the actual surface geometry.

Hope this helps.