An explicit cavitation multigrid algorithm for accelerating simulation of surface-textured bearings

The cavitation has a potential effect on the performance of surface-textured bearings. The traditional mass-conserving cavitation algorithms based on the Gauss-Seidel iteration method become slow as the grid increases. The computation time is unacceptable once the grid consists of a large array of textures. This study developed an explicit cavitation multigrid algorithm to accelerate the simulation of surface-textured bearings. The algorithm was based on the Ausas cavitation algorithm with the advantage of a matrix-free implementation. Novel numerical technologies were developed to overcome the difficulty of the floating free boundaries caused by the cavitation characteristics. An example of surface-dimpled thrust bearings was studied to analyze the algorithm efficiency. The algorithm is shown to be approximate optimal under reasonable solution parameters. It is an alternative to other cavitation algorithms.