With rotating machineries working at high speeds, oil flow in bearings becomes superlaminar.Under superlaminar conditions, flow\nexhibits between laminar and fully developed turbulence. In this study, superlaminar oil flow in an oil-lubricated tilting-pad journal\nbearing is analyzed through computational fluid dynamics (CFD). A three-dimensional bearing model is established. CFD results\nfromthe laminarmodel and 14 turbulence models are compared with experimental findings.Thelaminar simulation results of padside\npressure are inconsistent with the experimental data.Thus, the turbulence effects on superlaminar flow should be considered.\nThe simulated temperature and pressure distributions from the classical fully developed turbulence models cannot correctly fit the\nexperimental data. As such, turbulence models should be corrected for superlaminar flow. However, several corrections, such as\ntransition correction, are unsuitable. Among all the flow models, the SST model with low-Re correction exhibits the best pressure\ndistribution and turbulence viscosity ratio. Velocity profile analysis confirms that a buffer layer plays an important role in the\nsuperlaminar boundary layer. Classical fully developed turbulence models cannot accurately predict the buffer layer, but this\nproblem can be resolved by initiating an appropriate low-Re correction. Therefore, the SST model with low-Re correction yields\nsuitable results for superlaminar flows in bearings.
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