It has been over a century since the interest in inventing the optimal topology for bearings
arose. A significant achievement was published by Lord Rayleigh, who found the step-
bearing geometry which maximise the load-carrying capacity when the classical Reynolds
equation is used to model thin film flow of an iso-viscous and incompressible fluid. Since
then, new optimisation methods considering some variants of governing equations for
finding the best possible bearings have surfaced, one of which will be presented in this …

The search for the optimal bearing geometry has been on for over a century. In a publication
from 1918, Lord Rayleigh revealed the infinitely wide bearing geometry that maximises the
load carrying capacity under incompressible flow, ie the Rayleigh step bearing. Four
decades ago, Rohde, who continued on the same path, revealed the finitely wide bearing
geometry that maximises the load carrying capacity, referred to as the Rayleigh-pocket
bearing. Since then, the numerical results have been perfected with highly refined meshes …