In a multilobe journal bearing, the bearing surface consists of many small pads. Therefore, in this case the film thickness is discontinuous in the polar coordinate Θ. A sketch for the multilobe bearing is shown in Figure 7-12:

where αm is the mid-pad angle. For an N-pad bearing, it is given by

and d is the distance between the center of the pad and center of the journal in the initial configuration. The line joining the center of the pad and center of the journal bisect the pad sector.