A compliant hybrid gas journal bearing includes compliant hybrid bearing pads having a hydrostatic recess and a capillary restrictor for providing a flow of pressurized gas to the bearing The bearing also includes an inner rim adjacent the bearing pads, an outer rim and a damper bridge between the inner and outer rims The damper bridge has an axial length that is less than an axial length of the bearing pads and the outer rim to form a damper cavity on each side of the damper bridge An integral wire mesh damper is situated within the damper cavity on each side of the damper bridge Integral centering springs are located between the inner and outer rims to provide radial and rotational compliance to the bearing pads The oil-free bearing design addresses the low damping and low load capacity characteristics that are inherent in present day compliant air foil bearing designs, while retaining the compliance to changes in rotor geometry

Compliant hybrid gas journal bearing using integral wire mesh dampers

Aerostatic bearings design and analysis with the application to precision engineering: State-of-the-art and future perspectives

https://orbit.dtu.dk/files/140109293/Larsen.et.al.2016.stability_postprint.pdf

Stability of rigid rotors supported by air foil bearings: Comparison of two fundamental approaches

\n This paper offers an extensive review of publications dealing with the modeling, the design, and the experimental investigation of grooved dynamic gas-lubricated bearings. Recent years have witnessed a rise in small-scale and high-speed turbomachinery applications. Besides the well-known gas foil bearings, grooved bearings offer attractive advantages, which unveil their potential in particular at small scale due to the structural simplicity as well as satisfying predictability. This paper starts with a general background of the application of gas-lubricated bearings and introduces and compares the different gas bearing topologies. Further, the state-of-the-art modeling of grooved gas-lubricated bearings is introduced, systematically assessing the advantages and inconveniences of two major approaches, i.e., the narrow groove theory (NGT) and direct discretization method. Since the NGT method is an elegant and efficient approach to model the complex effects of periodic grooves, a critical section is dedicated to the NGT. In a second phase, different models to include additional physical phenomena such as real gas lubrication, rarefaction, or turbulence effects are reviewed. The paper concludes with a critical assessment of the state-of-the-art and indicates potential fields of research that would allow to shed more light into the understanding of these bearings, as well as with some thoughts on the integrated design methodologies of gas bearing supported rotors.

/pdf/a-review-of-grooved-dynamic-gas-bearings-4fby4om92v.pdf

A Review of Grooved Dynamic Gas Bearings

https://backend.orbit.dtu.dk/ws/files/131770968/Postprint.vonOsmanski.et.al.2017.fully.pdf

A fully coupled air foil bearing model considering friction - Theory & experiment

The past decade has witnessed a rapid evolution in the technology of gas lubrication which has been accompanied by the application of gas bearings on an increasing scale. Before 1960, existing applications were restricted to two specialized areas: gyroscopes for inertial navigation and gas circulators in nuclear reactors. Now they are widely employed in manufacturing industry, in grinding machines, drilling machines and hand tools and in a wide range of medical and scientific instruments. This progress has been made possible by the solution of two or three major technical problems and the assimilation of myriad minor advances in structural design, materials and manufacturing techniques.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0034-6683/1/2/303/pdf

J W Powell

Papers

A review of progress in gas lubrication