Water Lubricated Bearings

A special issue of Lubricants (ISSN 2075-4442).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 December 2025 | Viewed by 325

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
School of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610065, China
Interests: water lubricated bearings; tribology of transmission components; mixed lubrication; friction dynamics; friction vibration; friction and wear prediction; tribological performance evaluation; tribology testing technology
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
School of Transportation and Logistics Engeering, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan 430063, China
Interests: water lubricated bearings; elastomer tribology; hydrodynamic lubrication; mixed lubrication; polymer testing; ship tribology; thrust bearings; lubrication failure; multiphase flow; oil–water emulsification

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Guest Editor
Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 3200003, Israel
Interests: tribological techniques for the enhancement of mechanical design; marine propulsion systems; hydrodynamic lubrication; water-lubricated bearings; surface texturing

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Water lubricated bearings are a type of resource-saving and environmentally friendly bearing that uses new polymer engineering composite materials instead of traditional metal materials as the working interface of its transmission components and natural water instead of mineral oil as the lubricating medium for its transmission system. These bearings are widely used in various transmission machinery, especially to support the transmission shaft system in ship propulsion systems.

With the development of science and technology, high-end equipment has created increasingly stringent performance requirements for water lubricated bearings, such as a lower friction coefficient, better wear resistance, stronger environmental adaptability, and lower vibration and noise. In order to further improve the performance of water lubricated bearings, effective research has been carried out on the development of new materials, preparation processes, the optimization of lubrication structures, and advanced testing and evaluation methods.

In this Special Issue, we invite contributors to explore cutting-edge research and the latest developments in the field of water lubricated bearings. We welcome theoretical and experimental research, as well as review and survey papers.

Dr. Guangwu Zhou
Dr. Jian Huang
Dr. Morel Groper
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • water lubricated bearings
  • journal bearings
  • water lubrication
  • fluid lubrication
  • tribology

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

22 pages, 9751 KiB  
Article
Investigation on the Coupling Effect of Bionic Micro-Texture Shape and Distribution on the Tribological Performance of Water-Lubricated Sliding Bearings
by Xiansheng Tang, Yunfei Lan, Sergei Bosiakov, Michael Zhuravkov, Tao He, Yang Xia and Yongtao Lyu
Lubricants 2025, 13(7), 305; https://doi.org/10.3390/lubricants13070305 - 14 Jul 2025
Viewed by 150
Abstract
Water-lubricated bearings (WLB), due to their pollution-free nature and low noise, are increasingly becoming critical components in aerospace, marine applications, high-speed railway transportation, precision machine tools, etc. However, in practice, water-lubricated bearings suffer severe friction and wear due to low-viscosity water, harsh conditions, [...] Read more.
Water-lubricated bearings (WLB), due to their pollution-free nature and low noise, are increasingly becoming critical components in aerospace, marine applications, high-speed railway transportation, precision machine tools, etc. However, in practice, water-lubricated bearings suffer severe friction and wear due to low-viscosity water, harsh conditions, and contaminants like sediment, which can compromise the lubricating film and shorten their lifespan. The implementation of micro-textures has been demonstrated to improve the tribological performance of water-lubricated bearings to a certain extent, leading to their widespread adoption for enhancing the frictional dynamics of sliding bearings. The shape, dimensions (including length, width, and depth), and distribution of these micro-textures have a significant influence on the frictional performance. Therefore, this study aims to explore the coupling effect of different micro-texture shapes and distributions on the frictional performance of water-lubricated sliding, using the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis. The results indicate that strategically arranging textures across multiple regions can enhance the performance of the bearing. Specifically, placing linear groove textures in the outlet of the divergent zone and triangular textures in the divergent zone body maximize improvements in the load-carrying capacity and frictional performance. This specific configuration increases the load-carrying capacity by 7.3% and reduces the friction coefficient by 8.6%. Overall, this study provided critical theoretical and technical insights for the optimization of WLB, contributing to the advancement of clean energy technologies and the extension of critical bearing service life. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Water Lubricated Bearings)
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