Abstract

In deep-well pumping a motor at the surface drives a pump runner at the water level through a long vertical shaft supported at the top by a thrust bearing and guided at intervals of its length by journal bearings. For effective design the power absorbed by the journal bearings should be known approximately. The preponderance of horizontal shafts in various kinds of machinery has resulted in an extensive literature on their lubrication, but there is little that bears on the lubrication of such vertical shafts as are used in pumps, hydraulic turbines, a few steam turbines, cream separators, and centrifuges. The friction loss in these is small, but in the deep-well pump the loss may be as great as 5 per cent of the power input. The paper relates the details of an investigation to establish some of the basic facts underlying the lubrication of vertical journal bearings such as are used in deep-well pumps.

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