Frequency Effects on Dynamic Characteristics of Tilting-Pad Journal Bearings due to Pivot Flexibility

Abstract

The stable working condition of high speed, heavy loaded rotating machinery depends strongly on the stability provided by the journal bearing. Tilting pad journal bearings (TPJB) are widely used under such situation due to their inherent stability performance. However, because of the complexity of the TPJB structure, obtaining a reliable prediction of the journal bearing’s dynamic characteristics has always been a challenging task. In this paper, a theoretical analysis has been done to investigate the dynamic performance of a 4 pad TPJB with ball-in-socket pivot, emphasizing on the frequency dependency due to pivot flexibility. The analytical model containing the complete set of dynamic coefficients of the TPJB is built and the pivot stiffness is calculated and used to evaluate the equivalent dynamic coefficients of the bearing. In general, at lower perturbation frequency, the equivalent stiffness and damping increase with frequency. While for higher perturbation frequency, the dynamic coefficients are nearly independent of the frequency. Moreover, the results also show the limit value of the dynamic characteristics of the TPJB when the perturbation frequency is set to 0+ and ∞.