Design and fast verification of pocket elliptical journal bearings

Purpose ‐ The purpose of this paper was to conceive a fast method to verify design and performance of elliptical pocket journal bearings. Design/methodology/approach ‐ The computer-aided verification of pocket journal bearings is performed by means of a suitable finite element analysis method. Findings ‐ The results of sample analyses indicate that the machining tolerances are very influential on elliptical pocket bearing performances, and they must be included among the input data. Originality/value ‐ Although elliptical pocket bearings are widely used in turbomachineries, the influence of their design on performance has not been specifically investigated. A lot of works about tribological models are available, but few of them focus on their application to bearing design at the industrial level.