Combined effect of cavitation and multi-scale texture on the bearing properties of seawater-lubricated friction pair

To explore the tribological properties of a seawater-lubricated friction pair, the influence of cavitation and multi-scale texture on the load-carrying capacity is investigated under seawater lubrication conditions. In this paper, a numerical simulation method is proposed to reveal the influence mechanism of cavitation on the load-carrying capacity, and the simulation results are verified by experiments. The results show that cavitation, wedge action, and the vortex flow effect are the main mechanisms responsible for affecting the load-carrying capacity. Cavitation is not always advantageous for the load-carrying capacity. The results indicate that cavitation enhances the load-carrying capacity when the velocity is between 5 and 10 m/s. However, the cavitation effect shows a negative effect with a velocity exceeding 10 m/s. In three different scales of surface textures, the load-carrying capacity of the millimeter-scale texture is the highest, followed by the cross-scale texture and the micrometer-scale texture. The load-carrying capacity of the millimeter-scale texture is almost 10 times that of the micrometer-scale texture. Furthermore, regardless of the texture scale, a texture with a high depth-to-diameter ratio (H = 1) always exhibits a higher load-carrying capacity at low speeds (V < 10 m/s).