Parametric Studies on Dynamic Performance of Hydrostatic Flexure Pivot Tilting Pad Gas Bearing With Radial Compliance

Author(s):  
Robert N. Petro ◽  
Daejong Kim

Flexure pivot tilting pad gas bearings are recognized as an alternative to foil gas bearing [1, 2] for high speed turbomachinery, due to their capability to provide high rotor-bearing stability and simple structure. The flexure pivot design eliminates wear problem of axial pins or sockets at the pivots which are common in traditional tilting pad bearings. Added features such as a pivot offset and pad preloads can also be optimized to further improve the stability. Hybrid flexure pivot tilting pad gas bearing have also been reported [3]. The hybrid bearing has a direct air supply to the bearing clearance through a tiny orifice. It has shown that the hybrid operation of the tilting pad gas bearing can also increase the rotor-bearing stability [3]. In many microturbomachinery applications, hollow shafts are adopted to reduce the rotor weight and increase the bending critical speeds. However, the hollow shaft has a large centrifugal growth at high speeds requiring the gas bearing to have radial compliances. However, the radial compliance within the tilting pads can compromise the rotor-bearing stability because large displacement of the pads along the radial direction can cause hydrodynamic rotor-bearing instability associated with the increased bearing clearance (i.e. decreased effective preload) if the radial stiffness is not designed properly. Analytical studies show that optimal choice of pad radial stiffness could extend operating envelope of flexure pivot tilting pad gas bearing without deteriorating rotor-bearing stability [4]. High speed operation can generate significant amount of heat and adequate heat dissipation mechanism should also be developed. Hybrid operation is considered to have added benefit of effective cooling capability. This paper presents design studies on hybrid flexure tilting pad gas bearing with radial compliance which can accommodate large rotor centrifugal growth and also provide effective cooling mechanism.

Author(s):  
Kyuho Sim ◽  
Daejong Kim

This paper introduces new flexural pivot tilting pad gas bearings for high speed oil-free micro turbomachinery. The new flexural pivot tilting pad gas bearings have a special web geometry that provides a radial stiffness to accommodate rotor growths and high vibrations at critical speed, a pitching stiffness to accommodate rotor-bearing misalignments or rotor bending vibrations, and a very small tilting stiffness for rotor stability. Comprehensive numerical simulations involving orbit simulations and coast-down simulations were performed to investigate the effects of preloads and pivot offsets on the critical speeds and onset speeds of instability. Higher preload and pivot offset increased both critical speeds of the rotor-bearing system and onset speeds of instability due to the increased wedge effect. Design procedures of radial stiffness were presented considering both rotor centrifugal and thermal growths. From simple adiabatic solution of temperature distribution of gas film under pure hydrodynamic mode, enough bearing clearance at pivot was found to be a very important design aspect for high speed hydrodynamic gas bearings. Asymmetric radial stiffness was chosen as a final design to meet the target design speed of 180 krpm for bearing diameter of 28.52mm. Suggested tilting pad gas bearing with asymmetric radial stiffness was predicted to be very stable even under high external destabilizing forces.


Author(s):  
Anil Babu Seelam ◽  
Nabil Ahmed Zakir Hussain ◽  
Sachidananda Hassan Krishanmurthy

Brakes are the most important component of any automobile. Brakes provide the ability to reduce or bring automobile to a complete stop. The process of braking is usually achieved by applying pressure to the brake discs. The main objective of this research paper is to propose an appropriate design and to perform analysis of a suitable brake rotor to enhance the performance of the high-speed car. The design of the brake disc is modelled using Solid works and the analysis is carried out using Ansys software. The analysis has been conducted by considering stainless steel and grey cast iron using same brake rotor design so that optimal choice of brake disc can be considered. The analysis considered involves static structural analysis and steady state thermal analysis considering specific parameters on brake rotor to increase the life of brake rotor. From the analysis it is found that the performance and life of disc brake depends upon heat dissipation. From the analysis results it can be concluded that grey cast iron has performed better as compared to stainless steel as this material has anti-fade properties which improves the life of the brake rotor.


Author(s):  
Pranabesh De Choudhury

Abstract The rotordynamic analysis of a high speed multistage centrifugal compressor supported on radial magnetic bearings, which has been running successfully in the field for 9000 hours to date, is presented. Iterations required to achieve an acceptable rotor configuration using magnetic bearings are discussed. The results of the rotor-bearing system on standard fluid film five shoe tilting pad journal bearings are compared to the dynamics of the rotor on magnetic bearings. Correlation of the observed peak responses with those predicted on magnetic bearings is presented. The actual orbit plots and frequency plots during the coastdown of the rotor-bearing system on auxiliary ball bearings are discussed.


1970 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 945-953 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. C. Hsing ◽  
H. S. Cheng

This paper presents a numerical scheme capable of yielding accurate pressure profile for the transient and steady hydrodynamic gas film generated by high-speed relative motion of two nonparallel surfaces. The numerical difficulties associated with high compressibility numbers for the gas film Reynolds equation were overcome by employing a set of systematically generated irregular grid spacings based on a coordinate transformation. By coupling the fluid-film solution with the equations of motion of a tilting pad, the dynamics of the mass film interaction were treated. Results are presented for both steady-state and dynamical solutions. Static solutions for a 120-deg partial-arc gas bearing have been used for comparison.


Author(s):  
Juan C. Romero Quintini ◽  
Saira Pineda ◽  
José A. Matute ◽  
Luis U. Medina ◽  
José L. Gómez ◽  
...  

Tilting Pad Journal Bearings (TPJB) are commonly used in high-speed and high-power turbomachines, due to their contributions in avoiding rotor instabilities. Studies related to the estimation of dynamic coefficients have been carried out considering nominal values of the geometric parameters (clearance and preload) for all bearing pads. However, the unavoidable uncertainties on these geometric parameters and, therefore their possible influence on the TPJB rotordynamic coefficients do not seem to have been discussed enough. In a previous work, a numerical study was conducted to examine the influence of preload and bearing clearance variations on a five-pad TPJB rotordynamic coefficient. The current work is an extension of that paper, considering at this time the Design of Experiments framework. By means of a 2k factorial design and ANOVA random effect model, uncertainties on bearing clearance and pad preload values are introduced in a standard numerical model (i.e. finite element model) used to estimate the direct and cross-coupled dynamic stiffnesses of the five pad TPJB. The influence on these dynamic coefficients, due to the variance of the aforementioned geometric parameters, is discussed and presented in graphical form in order to illustrate the sensitivity of the TPJB dynamic coefficients. Results derived from this study show that variations on loaded pads affect the direct dynamic coefficients, and unloaded pads variations influence the cross-coupled dynamic coefficients. This work contributes to the understanding of the sensitivity of TPJB dynamic coefficients to manufacturing tolerances.


1976 ◽  
Vol 98 (3) ◽  
pp. 1053-1061
Author(s):  
J. M. Tessarzik ◽  
T. Chiang ◽  
R. H. Badgley

A bearing damper, operating on the support flexure of a pivoted pad in a tilting-pad type gas-lubricated journal bearing, has been designed, built, and tested under externally applied random vibrations. A 36,000 rpm, 10 Kwe turbogenerator had previously been subjected to external random vibrations, and vibration response data had been recorded and analyzed for amplitude distribution and frequency content at a number of locations in the machine. Based upon data from that evaluation, a piston-type damper was designed and developed for each of the two flexibly-supported journal bearing pads (one in each of the two three-pad bearings). A modified turbogenerator, with dampers installed, has been retested under random vibration conditions. Root-mean-square vibration amplitudes were determined from the test data, and displacement power spectral density analyses have been performed. Results of these data reduction efforts have been compared with vibration tolerance limits and previously reported response characteristics of the unmodified machine. Results of the tests indicate significant reductions in vibration levels in the bearing gas-lubricant films, particularly in the rigidly mounted pads. The utility of the gas-lubricated damper for limiting rotor-bearing system vibrations in high-speed turbomachinery has thus been demonstrated.


2006 ◽  
Vol 129 (1) ◽  
pp. 112-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyuho Sim ◽  
Daejong Kim

This paper introduces flexure pivot tilting pad gas bearings with pad radial compliance for high-speed oil-free microturbomachinery. The pad radial compliance was for accommodation of rotor centrifugal growth at high speeds. Analytical equation for the rotor centrifugal growth based on plane stress model agreed very well with finite element method results. Parametric studies on pivot offset, preload, and tilting stiffness were performed using nonlinear orbit simulations and coast-down simulations. Higher preload and pivot offset increased both critical speeds of the rotor-bearing system and onset speeds of instability due to the increased wedge effect. Pad radial stiffness and nominal bearing clearance were very important design parameters for high-speed applications due to the physically existing rotor centrifugal growth. From the series of parametric studies, the maximum achievable rotor speed was limited by the minimum clearance at the pad pivot calculated from the rotor growth and radial deflection of pads due to hydrodynamic pressure. Pad radial stiffness also affects the rotor instability significantly. Small radial stiffness could accommodate rotor growth more effectively but deteriorated rotor instability. From parametric studies on a bearing with 28.5mm in diameter and 33.2mm in length, optimum pad radial stiffness and bearing clearance are 1-2×107N∕m and 35μm, respectively, and the maximum achievable speed appears 180krpm. The final design with suggested optimum design variables could be also stable under relatively large destabilizing forces.


Author(s):  
Daejong Kim ◽  
Aaron M. Rimpel ◽  
Suk Sang Chang ◽  
Jong Hyun Kim

This paper introduces a design and manufacturing of mesoscale flexure pivot tilting pad gas bearing with a diameter of 5 mm and a length of 1–2.5 mm for PowerMEMS (micro electromechanical systems for power generation) applications with power ranges of 100–200 W. Potential applications include power source for unmanned air vehicles, small robots, microgas turbines to be harnessed by very small solid oxide fuel cells, microblowers/compressors for microfuel cells, etc. The design studies involve scaling analysis, time-domain orbit simulations for stability analyses, and frequency-domain modal analyses for prediction of rotor-bearing natural frequencies. Scaling analysis indicates that direct miniaturization of macroscale tilting pad gas bearing can result in a large bearing number, which may render the rotor-bearing system unstable. However, the scaling analysis provides the baseline design from which the final design can be derived considering manufacturing issue. The generalized modal analysis using impedance contours predict damped natural frequencies close to those from orbit simulations, providing high fidelity to the developed numerical methods. It was predicted that the designed mesoscale tilting pad gas bearings would show very stable operation up to a maximum simulated speed of 1,000,000 rpm. The designed mesoscale tilting pad gas bearings were manufactured using X-ray lithography and electroplating.


Lubricants ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 18
Author(s):  
Eckhard Schüler ◽  
Olaf Berner

In high speed, high load fluid-film bearings, the laminar-turbulent flow transition can lead to a considerable reduction of the maximum bearing temperatures, due to a homogenization of the fluid-film temperature in radial direction. Since this phenomenon only occurs significantly in large bearings or at very high sliding speeds, means to achieve the effect at lower speeds have been investigated in the past. This paper shows an experimental investigation of this effect and how it can be used for smaller bearings by optimized eddy grooves, machined into the bearing surface. The investigations were carried out on a Miba journal bearing test rig with Ø120 mm shaft diameter at speeds between 50 m/s–110 m/s and at specific bearing loads up to 4.0 MPa. To investigate the potential of this technology, additional temperature probes were installed at the crucial position directly in the sliding surface of an up-to-date tilting pad journal bearing. The results show that the achieved surface temperature reduction with the optimized eddy grooves is significant and represents a considerable enhancement of bearing load capacity. This increase in performance opens new options for the design of bearings and related turbomachinery applications.


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