A​bstract

Bearings are used in number of applications across Power Generation, Turbomachinery oil and gas industry, industrial processing and many more. In all those applications bearings contribute to efficient operation and durable performance of components, increasing energy efficiency, reducing losses and generally decreasing environmental impact throughout component life. Traditional approach of bearing design based on historical performance of the existing bearing are not extensible to the large design which are used in hydropower and gas turbines, for example. To address these deficiencies engineers developed workflow incorporating multiple physics that allows bearing designers to describe the complete performance envelope for their bearing design. The workflow couples thermal, structural and fluid flow effects into one holistic solution. The paper describes the coupled Fluid-Structure Interaction (FSI) simulation of a thrust bearing which enables designers to completely simulate and describe performance of the bearing considering advanced physical phenomes which are associated with bearing working conditions.