Performance of magnetic fluid based rotating rough circular step bearings

An attempt has been made to analyze the performance of a magnetic fluid based rotating rough circular step bearing. The roughness of the bearing surface is modeled by a stochastic random variable with non zero mean, variance and skewness. The associated Reynolds' equation is solved with appropriate boundary conditions to obtain the pressure distribution, which in turn, is used to get the load carrying capacity leading to the calculation of response time. Results are presented graphically as well as in a tabular form. It is noticed that the bearing suffers on account of transverse surface roughness. This article makes it clear that pressure, load carrying capacity and response time increase with increasing the magnetization parameter. However, the negatively skewed roughness and radii ratio induce better performance. It is noticed that the load carrying capacity decreases when both plates rotate in the same direction. This trend reverses when the plates move in the opposite direction. This article reveals that the negative effect caused by porosity and roughness can be compensated to a considerable extent by the positive effect induced by the magnetization parameter and the aspect ratio in the case of negatively skewed roughness when the plates rotate in opposite direction.