Numerical Calculation of Rotation Effects on Hybrid Air Journal Bearings

ABSTRACT Hybrid air journal bearings are of great importance in the precision engineering. Despite much progress, the influence of the aerostatic effect and the aerodynamic effect on the bearings is still not clear. Numerical calculation is a useful technique to evaluate bearing performance. Many theoretical problems related to Reynolds equation have been figured out by numerical simulation. The present study analyzes the effects of rotational speed—that is, the bearing speed number—on the performance of hybrid bearings. The behaviors of the pure aerostatic bearing and the pure aerodynamic bearing are investigated for comparison. The second-order finite difference method (FDM) and an iterative procedure are proposed to solve the Reynolds equation and derive the air film pressure distribution. The bearing characteristics such as load capacity, stiffness, friction coefficient, attitude angle, and mass inflow rate are taken into consideration. The research reveals the very dependence of the hybrid bearing's performance on the journal rotation and eccentricity ratio. The numerical results indicate that at a small bearing speed number of 0.223 and eccentricity ratio of 0.15, about 99.8% of the load capacity and 99.7% of the stiffness are determined by the aerostatic effect, whereas at a large bearing speed number of 2.229 and eccentricity ratio of 0.55, about 63.2% of the load capacity and 83.3% of the stiffness are determined by the aerodynamic effect.