The Effect of External Pressurization on Self-Acting Foil Bearings

1965 ◽  
Vol 87 (3) ◽  
pp. 631-638 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Wildmann ◽  
A. Wright

The effects of introducing a small amount of lubricant under pressure into a self-acting foil bearing film are investigated. Foil shape and pressure distribution under the foil are obtained by combining the equilibrium equation with the Reynolds’ equation and solving the resulting equation. The results show that the effect of even small external pressurization in a self-acting foil bearing is very important.

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hao Li ◽  
Haipeng Geng ◽  
Hao Lin

Purpose The misalignment is generally inevitable in the process of machining and assembly of rotor systems with gas foil bearings, but the exploration on this phenomenon is relatively less. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to carry out the thermo-elastohydrodynamic analysis of the foil bearing with misalignment, especially the inhomogeneous foil bearing. Design/methodology/approach The rotor is allowed to misalign in two non-rotating directions. Then the static and dynamic performance of the inhomogeneous foil bearing is studied. The thermal-elastohydrodynamic analysis is realized by combining the Reynolds equation, foil deformation equation and energy equation. The small perturbation method is used to calculate the dynamic coefficients, then the critical whirl ratio is obtained. Findings The gas pressure, film thickness and temperature distribution distort when the misalignment appears. The rotor misalignment can improve the loading capacity but rise the gas temperature at the same time. Furthermore, the rotor misalignment can affect the critical whirl ratio which demonstrates that it is necessary to analyze the misalignment before the rotordynamic design. Originality/value The value of this paper is the exploration of the thermo-elastohydrodynamic performance of the inhomogeneous foil bearing with misalignment, the analysis procedure and the corresponding results are valuable for the design of turbo system with gas foil bearings.


Author(s):  
Hao Li ◽  
Haipeng Geng ◽  
Lei Qi ◽  
Lu Gan

Foil thrust bearings have attracted considerable attention in small-sized turbo machines with its excellent stability, high compliance, temperature durability. Geometric structure play an important role on the performance of foil thrust bearings. However, the current research on the structure mainly focuses on the underlying foil type, such as bump foil, protuberant bump. In fact, the foil profile, especially in the convergent region has significant influence. In this paper, foil thrust bearings were classified into convex, slope and concave types according to the profile curvature. A numerical model of six pads foil thrust bearing was established by combining the shell model and Reynolds equation. The static and dynamic performance of thrust bearings with different curvature was calculated. The results showed that the convex convergent possessed higher capacity and was not sensitive to displacement disturbance. A stiffness testing system for thrust foil bearing was set up, and the results verified that the foil with convex wedge had higher stiffness. The experiment also indicated that all the thrust foil bearings had typical damping hysteresis. The axial force of a 10 kW on-board compressor was calculated. Based on the conclusion of this paper, the design scheme of curvature value β = 0.6 and gas thickness h2=15 µm was given in consideration of bearing capacity and machining robustness.


2012 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 413-422 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. Wang ◽  
S.-H. Chang

AbstractIn an air foil bearing analysis the model is usually solved iteratively due in part to the nonlinearity of the modeling Reynolds equation and the compliance of the bearing surface. The solution procedure requires a multiple-level-deep nested iteration, which involves extended solution time and convergence difficulty. In this study, a simple air foil bearing model is used and the compressible-fluid Reynolds equation for modeling gas lubrication is linearized by Newton's method. The discretized equation is solved by one of the two parallel iterative methods, red-black or strip partition successive-over-relaxation (SOR) method. The parallel programming is conducted using OpenMP programming in an eight-core work-station. Then, a numerical damping scheme for the film-profile convergence is presented. Finally, a root-finding process is conducted to iteratively attain the eccentricity of the bearing for a given load. It is found that the numerical damping step is crucial, which allows the use of a larger relaxation factor to have a fast rate of convergence. Both the parallel SOR methods are easy to implement and the red-black SOR method exhibits better efficiency in the studied cases. This study presents a parallel computing scheme for analyzing air foil bearing of bump-type by today's shared-memory multicore platforms.


1993 ◽  
Vol 115 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
J.-P. Peng ◽  
M. Carpino

The stiffness and damping coefficients of an elastically supported gas foil bearing are calculated. A perfect gas is used as the lubricant, and its behavior is described by the Reynolds equation. The structural model consists only of an elastic foundation. The fluid equations and the structural equations are coupled. A perturbation method is used to obtain the linearized dynamic coefficient equations. A finite difference formulation has been developed to solve for the four stiffness and the four damping coefficients. The effect of the bearing compliance on the dynamic coefficients is discussed in this paper.


2007 ◽  
Vol 129 (3) ◽  
pp. 628-639 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ju-ho Song ◽  
Daejong Kim

A new foil gas bearing with spring bumps was constructed, analyzed, and tested. The new foil gas bearing uses a series of compression springs as compliant underlying structures instead of corrugated bump foils. Experiments on the stiffness of the spring bumps show an excellent agreement with an analytical model developed for the spring bumps. Load capacity, structural stiffness, and equivalent viscous damping (and structural loss factor) were measured to demonstrate the feasibility of the new foil bearing. Orbit and coast-down simulations using the calculated stiffness and measured structural loss factor indicate that the damping of underlying structure can suppress the maximum peak at the critical speed very effectively but not the onset of hydrodynamic rotor-bearing instability. However, the damping plays an important role in suppressing the subsynchronous vibrations under limit cycles. The observation is believed to be true with any air foil bearings with different types of elastic foundations.


1974 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. E. Langlois

The assumption of “perfect flexibility” is shown to be self-consistent in an important class of finite-width foil bearing problems. When the membrane equations are written in the “stretched coordinates” of foil bearing theory, the usual edge conditions on the tape result in a statically determinate problem. The tape dynamics couples to the Reynolds lubrication equation through a single force-balance equation which does not entail the elastic strain.


2015 ◽  
Vol 138 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kai Feng ◽  
Yuman Liu ◽  
Xueyuan Zhao ◽  
Wanhui Liu

Rotors supported by gas foil bearings (GFBs) experience stability problem caused by subsynchronous vibrations. To obtain a GFB with satisfactory damping characteristics, this study presented a novel hybrid bump-metal mesh foil bearing (HB-MMFB) that consists of a bump foil and metal mesh blocks in an underlying supporting structure, which takes advantage of both bump-type foil bearings (BFBs) and MMFBs. A test rig with a nonrotating shaft was designed to estimate structure characterization. Results from the static load tests show that the proposed HB-MFBs exhibit an excellent damping level compared with the BFBs with a similar size because of the countless microslips in the metal mesh blocks. In the dynamic load tests, the HB-MFB with a metal mesh density of 36% presents a viscous damping coefficient that is approximately twice that of the test BFB. The dynamics structural coefficients of HB-MFBs, including structural stiffness, equivalent viscous damping, and structural loss factor, are all dependent on excitation frequency and motion amplitude. Moreover, they exhibit an obvious decrease with the decline in metal mesh density.


Author(s):  
K. Shalash ◽  
J. Schiffmann

Potential geometrical deviations in bump foil bearings due to manufacturing uncertainty can have significant effects on both the local stiffness and clearance, and hence, affecting the overall bearing performance. The manufacturing uncertainty of bump type foil bearings was investigated, showing large geometrical deviations, using a developed measurement tool for the formed bump foils. A reduced order foil bearing model was used in a Monte Carlo simulation studying the effect of manufacturing noise on the onset of instability, highlighting the sensitivity of the rotor-bearing system to such manufacturing deviations. It was found that 30% of the simulated cases resulted improvements in stability, the remaining cases underperformed. Attempting to increase the robustness of the bearing, two other compliant structures replacing the classical gen-II bump foils were investigated from a manufacturing perspective. The first is a modified bump type Sinusoidal foil, and the second is the Cantilever beam foil. Consequently, quasi-static load-displacement tests were executed showing deviations in local clearance and stiffness for the classical bump type compliant structure compared to the other designs. It was found that the Cantilever beam foils yield more robustness compared to the bump type foils. Finally, an analytical model for the sequential engagement of the compliant structure is presented and validated with experimental measurements for both bump type and Cantilever structures.


Author(s):  
Daejong Kim ◽  
Brian Nicholson ◽  
Lewis Rosado ◽  
Garry Givan

Foil bearings are one type of hydrodynamic air/gas bearings but with a compliant bearing surface supported by structural material that provides stiffness and damping to the bearing. The hybrid foil bearing (HFB) in this paper is a combination of a traditional hydrodynamic foil bearing with externally-pressurized air/gas supply system to enhance load capacity during the start and to improve thermal stability of the bearing. The HFB is more suitable for relatively large and heavy rotors where rotor weight is comparable to the load capacity of the bearing at full speed and extra air/gas supply system is not a major added cost. With 4,448N∼22,240N thrust class turbine aircraft engines in mind, the test rotor is supported by HFB in one end and duplex rolling element bearings in the other end. This paper presents experimental work on HFB with diameter of 102mm performed at the US Air force Research Laboratory. Experimental works include: measurement of impulse response of the bearing to the external load corresponding to rotor’s lateral acceleration of 5.55g, forced response to external subsynchronous excitation, and high speed imbalance response. A non-linear rotordynamic simulation model was also applied to predict the impulse response and forced subsynchronous response. The simulation results agree well with experimental results. Based on the experimental results and subsequent simulations, an improved HFB design is also suggested for higher impulse load capability up to 10g and rotordynamics stability up to 30,000rpm under subsynchronous excitation.


2008 ◽  
Vol 131 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Said Jahanmir ◽  
Hooshang Heshmat ◽  
Crystal Heshmat

Diamondlike carbon (DLC) coatings, particularly in the hydrogenated form, provide extremely low coefficients of friction in concentrated contacts. The objective of this investigation was to evaluate the performance of DLC coatings for potential application in foil bearings. Since in some applications the bearings experience a wide range of temperatures, tribological tests were performed using a single foil thrust bearing in contact with a rotating flat disk up to 500°C. The coatings deposited on the disks consisted of a hydrogenated diamondlike carbon film (H-DLC), a nonhydrogenated DLC, and a thin dense chrome deposited by the Electrolyzing™ process. The top foil pads were coated with a tungsten disulfide based solid lubricant (Korolon™ 900). All three disk coatings provided excellent performance at room temperature. However, the H-DLC coating proved to be unacceptable at 300°C due to lack of hydrodynamic lift, albeit the very low coefficient of friction when the foil pad and the disk were in contact during stop-start cycles. This phenomenon is explained by considering the effect of atmospheric moisture on the tribological behavior of H-DLC and using the quasihydrodynamic theory of powder lubrication.


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