This paper presents a numerical study about lubricant inertia effect onthermohydrodynamic (THD) characteristics of Rayleigh step bearings running under steady,incompressible and laminar condition. To reach this goal, the set of governing equationsis solved numerically with and without considering the inertia terms. The discretizedforms of the momentum and energy equations are obtained by the finite volume method andsolved using the Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) technique. These equations are solvedsimultaneously because the dependency of lubricant viscosity with temperature. Thehydrodynamic and thermal behaviors of the slider step bearings are demonstrated bypresenting several figures including the lubricant pressure and temperature distributionswith and without considering the fluid inertia effect. Numerical results show that inertiaterm has considerable effect on THD characteristics of step bearings, especially when theyrun with high velocity of runner surface.
