Abstract
Compliant foil gas lubricated bearings are used for the support of light loads in the order of few kilograms at high speeds, in the order of 50,000 RPM. The stiffness of the foil bearings depends both on the stiffness of the compliant foil and on the lubricating gas film. The stiffness of the bearings plays a crucial role in the stable operation of the supported rotor over a range of speeds. This paper describes a numerical approach to estimate the stiffness of the bearings using pseudo spectral scheme. Methodology to obtain the stiffness of the foil bearing as a function of weight of the shaft is given and the results are presented.
Highlights
Oil free turbo machinery technology is one in which the rotor supports do not employ oil lubrication like the conventional rolling element bearings
Self-acting gas foil bearings are increasingly being used for many low load and high speed applications [1]
In the gas foil bearing, the shaft is surrounded by the encircling foil
Summary
Oil free turbo machinery technology is one in which the rotor supports do not employ oil lubrication like the conventional rolling element bearings. The shape of the edge depends on the location of the shaft in the bearing and on the deflection of the encircling foil due to the pressure force. Feng has presented an approach in which the bump foil of the bearing is modeled as a link spring structure in Ref [7]. The gas foil bearing pressure distribution at a given operating condition is solved using the pseudo spectral scheme. By perturbing the eccentricity of the shaft and re-computing the pressure distribution, the change in force exerted by the bearing on the shaft is obtained. This change in force, when decomposed in x and y directions, gives us the kx and ky values of the bearing. The computed stiffness values are shown in the results section and concluded
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