The dynamics of a rotor supported in Gas Foil Bearings is strongly influenced by stiffness and damping properties of the bearings. In order to obtain the structural stiffness properties of Gas Foil Bearings,a coupled finite element method(FEM) is developed in this paper. The compressible gas lubricated Reynolds equation is transformed into a typical elliptic partial differential equation and solved by FEM. The elastic deformation equation and the contact boundary conditions between foils are solved by nonlinear contact finite method. A generalized numerical solving method for the elasto-aerodynamically coupled lubrication problem in the foil bearing is given with mesh mapping relationship between the two kind of finite element solving process above mentioned. The structural stiffness of the foil bearings with different parameters is estimated by using the numerical method. It is helpful to decide the structural parameters of the foil bearing.
展开▼
