Design and testing of aerodynamic thrust bearings for micro turbomachinery applications

摘要

This paper presents the theoretical and experimental performance comparison of different grooved thrust bearing geometries for micro turbomachinery applications. A parameter study and optimisation are carried out to identify and quantify the effect of different geometrical parameters on bearing characteristics as load carrying capacity and viscous frictional losses. The obtained performance curves are experimentally validated up to speeds of 240,000 rpm. A reasonable agreement can be observed with the simulated data.