Tailoring of the bearing stiffness to enhance the performance of gas-lubricated bump-type foil thrust bearing

Abstract

This study aims to tailor the bearing stiffness for enhancing the load-carrying capacity of foil thrust bearings. New architectures for the bump foil are introduced with structural stiffness tailored in the radial and circumferential directions to ensure a converging gas film under high axial loads while maintaining a reasonable bearing compliance to accommodate thermal as well as mechanical distortions. The structural stiffness of the bearing is calculated with an analytical method previously introduced by the authors, and the flow in the gas film is modeled with 2-D compressible Reynolds equation. The Couette Approximation technique is used to calculate the temperature distribution in the gas film and the small perturbations method is used to calculate its dynamic force coefficients. Enhanced load capacity could be obtained with the introduced bump foil designs.