Effect of Manufacturing Errors on Performance of Gas Lubricated Journal Bearing

It is a common problem for every bearing designer to reduce the machining cost without lowering the bearing performance. In this paper,the effects of manufacturing errors on the performance of gas lubricated journal bearings are analysed.The economic accuracy of machining process,which is usually used for bearing housing finish machining,is presented. After that the factors which effect the machining accuracy are discussed.The effects of main machining errors,round error and cylindrical error,on bearing performance are analysed by finite element method. An error distribution formula is presented,in which both round and cylindrical errors are considered. It was shown that the effects of machining errors on bearing performance are related to the error type and parameters,and the acceptable round and cylindrical machining errors should be controlled in the range of 20%30% of the average film thickness.