Simulation and Comparative study on Cooling Performance of Thrust Bearing Cooled by Heat Pipe

The thrust bearing of vertical hydro-generator unit bears the weight and axial load of the rotating part. During the operation, oil film friction will generate a lot of heat. A good cooling method and heat dissipation structure are the keys to ensure its safe and stable operation. In this paper, the thrust bearing of a generator set of a pumped storage power station in China is taken as the research object, and the cooling performance of the existing cooling form is analyzed through the simulation method of conjugate heat transfer. On this basis, two heat pipe cooling schemes and a flat micro heat pipe array cooling scheme were innovatively designed, and their cooling characteristics were compared and analyzed. The results show that the performance of the flat plate micro heat pipe array cooling scheme is better, which can significantly improve the temperature distribution uniformity on the basis of reducing the temperature of the thrust bearing pad, which provides a reference for the design of the thrust bearing cooling structure of the vertical hydro-generator set in actual engineering.

I. Introduction

The thrust bearing is an important component of the vertical hydroelectric generator unit, which bears the weight of the rotating part and the axial water thrust, and its operating status directly affects the operation safety of the hydroelectric unit [1]. The oil circulation cooling system plays an important role in the operation reliability of thrust bearing. A good cooling structure can make the heat dissipation effect of thrust bearing better to ensure the safety and stability in the operation process.