Numerical investigation of the performance of aerostatic journal bearings

摘要

The current study presents a detailed theoretical analysis on the performance of aerostatic journal bearings. The dimensionless Reynolds equation is derived and discretized by the finite difference method. An iterative procedure is adopted to get the air film pressure distribution. The bearing characteristics such as load capacity, stiffness and air flow rate under various bearing operating and geometric parameters are investigated. The numerical results show that the journal rotation plays an important role on the bearing characteristics, and the rotating speeds must be taken into consideration. The proposed method provides a valuable approach for analyzing the performance of aerostatic journal bearings, and can be used for the bearing optimizing design.