Thermogas- and thermohydrodynamic simulation of thrust and slider bearings: Convergence and efficiency of different reduction approaches

•Reduction methods for gas thrust and oil slider bearing models are presented.•Comparison of reduction methods with respect to numerical efficiency and accuracy.•Significant reduction of the computation time compared to unreduced models.

The pressure and temperature distribution in gas thrust and oil slider bearings are described by the generalized Reynolds equation according to Dowson and the 3D energy equation. In this paper, two different approaches are presented in order to reduce the dimension of the governing nonlinear integro-differential equation system and in order to stabilize the solution process. In the first reduction approach, the temperature in the fluid is averaged across the fluid film according to Lee and Kim. In the second approach, Legendre polynomials are used to approximate temperature, density and fluidity across the fluid film. The reduction techniques are compared with respect to numerical efficiency, accuracy and convergence behavior.