Isogeometric Analysis of Reynolds Equation for Hydrodynamic Lubrication

This paper proposes exact geometry based Isogeometric analysis (IGA) to solve Reynolds equation for pressure distribution in hydrodynamic lubrication. The proposed methodology is established for hydrodynamic lubrication of thrust pad bearing, considering both infinitely wide thrust pad bearing and finite thrust pad bearing. The methodology is validated by comparing it with analytical results for infinitely wide thrust pad bearing. The results of IGA are compared with the results obtained from Finite Difference Method (FDM) and Finite Element Method (FEM). IGA shows satisfactory results with lesser degrees of freedom compared to FDM and FEM.