Influence of the foil gas-dynamic bearing installation angle on its performance

Gas-dynamic bearings are widely used in the high-speed low-power turbomachines due to their missing complex oil system, wide range of the operating temperatures, low cost, long overhaul intervals, etc. Due to these reasons, such bearings are introduced in the most advanced turbomachines systems, for example, in the aerospace and energy industries. Currently, design, development and research continues on the new promising gas-dynamic bearings of this type. One of the aspects in such research lies in studying the bearing units performance exposed to the off-design conditions. The paper considers the influence of the gas-dynamic foil bearing cartridge installation angle on its performance with a bearing sleeve rotating at the frequency of 24,000 min–1. The experimental study was carried out on a bearing bench, which was supported by a specially designed and created cartridge making it possible to create a moment relative to the bearing center. The study resulted in obtaining dependences of the cartridge inclination angle and the end gaps on the bending moment using the optical method.

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