###### Abstract  
The novelty of the present study is that it investigates the effect of propeller shaft deflection, caused by the propeller self-weight and interfacial mixed forces, on the fluid-solid-heat (FSH) coupling performance of water lubricated rubber stern bearing (WLRSB). In the FSH coupling model, the generalized average Reynolds equation and the Kogut-Etsion asperity contact model are used to determine the hydrodynamic and the elastic-plastic contact behaviors of WLRSB. In the thermal analysis, the journal, water film, and rubber bushing are considered as an integrated system (JWR system) using the Euler method. To prove the correctness of the developed model, the predicted results are verified by comparisons with the experimental results given in the literature. In addition, to assess the effect of the force-driven deflection during FSH simulation, comparisons of the FSH predictions between the aligned journal case and the deflected journal case are carried out. The results indicate that, especially under a heavy load condition, the deflection of the stern shaft should be incorporated into the lubrication gap between the journal-rubber interface during the analysis of FSH performance of the JWR system. water-lubricated rubber stern bearing; fluid-solid-heat performance; bend deformation; numerical simulation +
Footnote †: journal: Applied  
Studies have been published to investigate the fluid-solid coupling performances (or mixed friction performances) of stern bearings [7; 8; 9; 10; 11; 12; 13]. [PERSON] et al. [8] and [PERSON] et al. [12] presented a mixed lubrication model for a misaligned marine stem tube bearing, in which the effects of cavitation, bend deformation of the propeller shaft, and the wall slip of thin film have been considered. [PERSON] et al. [9] investigated the Stribeck curves of water-lubricated bearings experimentally under a wide range of operating conditions. To improve the computation efficiency of the fluid-solid coupling model of journal bearings, a fast computing technology was developed by [PERSON] et al. [11] and [PERSON] et al. [10]. However, the studies mentioned above ignored the thermal effects caused by the asperity contact behavior between the journal and the bush. The thermal effects caused by fluid film shearing significantly affect the performance of a stern bearing and have been studied numerically and experimentally by scholars. The experimental results of the oil film temperature distribution presented by [PERSON] et al. [14], [PERSON] et al. [15], and [PERSON] et al. [16] demonstrated that the maximum temperature of oil film occurred near the maximum fluid pressure location, and that oil film temperature distribution was highly dependent on operating conditions such as the journal speed, external load, journal misalignment, etc. It is noteworthy that a hydrodynamic bearing system can be considered as a heat conduction coupling system during thermal analysis. Related studies were experimentally performed by [PERSON] et al. [17], [PERSON] et al. [18], and [PERSON] et al. [19]. In the field of theoretical modeling, thermohydrodynamic analyses for journal bearings were performed by [PERSON] et al. [20], [PERSON] et al. [21], [PERSON] et al. [22], [PERSON] et al. [23], [PERSON] et al. [24], [PERSON] et al. [25], [PERSON] et al. [26], and [PERSON] et al. [27]. For the thermal study of water-lubricated bearings, [PERSON] et al. [28] numerically investigated the thermohydrodynamic performance of a water-lubricated bearing considering misaligned and turbulent effects. In their study, the asperity contact effect was absent and the misaligned effect was considered based on a predetermined misalignment value. More recently, [PERSON] and [PERSON] [29] performed an interesting study to investigate, numerically and experimentally, the effects of forced axial flow on the thermal behaviors of multi-groove water-lubricated bearings, in which the journal was treated as aligned.