Open Access

ARTICLE

A study on the Gas-based Lubrication of Elastic Foil Bearings Using an Over Relaxation Iteration Method

Xiangxi Du^*, Yanhua Sun
School of Mechanical Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, 710049, China
* Corresponding Author: Xiangxi Du. Email:
(This article belongs to this Special Issue: EFD and Heat Transfer III)

Fluid Dynamics & Materials Processing 2021, 17(5), 917-929. https://doi.org/10.32604/fdmp.2021.015710

Received 07 January 2021; Accepted 22 April 2021; Issue published 05 July 2021

Abstract

A new type of foil bearings with a specific surface microstructure is studied. First, relevant boundary conditions based on the assumption of rarefied gas flow are proposed, then, the static bearing capacity and friction torque are analyzed in the framework of a numerical technique based on the discretization of the governing equation for rarefied gas-dynamics. It is shown that under the same static load, the difference between the minimum film thickness calculated in this exploration and the results provided by dedicated tests is not obvious; with an increase in the load, the simulation results are closer to the test values; when the bearing rotor speed is 60000r/min, the bearing capacity of the new foil bearing with different foil groove depth is reduced by the effect of the boundary slip. With an increase in the depth of the grooves on the surface of the foil, the influence of the boundary slip effect increases; when the eccentricity of the bearing increases, the gas pressure generated increases and the bearing capacity increases.

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Keywords

Over relaxation iteration method; non-dimensional equation; elastic foil gas bearing; hydrodynamics; lubrication characteristics

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