Impact of lubricant contamination with water on hydrodynamic thrust bearing performance

Several studies have been carried out in order to describe the impact of water-contaminated lubricants on lubrication performance. One approach considers the water-contaminated oil as a homogeneous lubricant with physical characteristics varying with water concentration. The presented work is being achieved in order to experimentally validate this theory. First investigations showed that the variation of contaminated lubricant viscosity has the most significant effect on lubricating performance. Consequently, the lubricant viscosity is the only parameter taken into account in this study. Thus, based on the rheological measurements, water-in-oil emulsion viscosity has been modelled according to water concentration and temperature. Water concentration was considered relatively to total mass of oil: the mass concentration varied then from 0 to 7% and temperature from 10 to 80 °C. Viscosity modelling was then used to perform the numerical simulations of a hydrodynamic thrust bearing supplied with water contaminated oil. Finally, the experimental validation will be done by measuring various bearing characteristics like the film/pad temperature, the film thickness and the friction torque on a tilting pad thrust bearing test rig.