NANO-BEARING: THE DESIGN OF A NEW TYPE OF AIR BEARING WITH FLEXURE STRUCTURE

摘要

A new type of air bearing with flexure structure is introduced. The new bearing is designed for precision mechanical engineering devices such as mechanical watch movement. The new design uses the flexure structure to provide 3D damping to absorb shocks from all directions. Two designs are presented: one has 12 T-shape slots in the radian direction while the other has 8 spiral slots in the radian direction. Both designs have flexure mountings on the axial directions. Based on the finite element analysis (FEA), the new bearing can reduce the vibration (displacement) by as much as 8.37% and hence, can better protect the shafts.