Advanced Experimental and Numerical Analysis of the Pressurized Air Wave Bearings
Experimental, analytical, and numerical investigations have been done in the field of gas lubrication, but few people focused on details of fluid flow between the sliding surfaces. In this work the entire pressurized wave bearing is analyzed in detail. The numerical study using a three-dimensional commercial code and a two-dimensional finite difference code gives information about the flow at many levels. The numerically computed flow rates using the commercial code are compared with experimental results determined at NASA Glenn Research Center on an experimental rig. The calculated discharge coefficient is used in the finite difference code which solves the Reynolds equation. The holes effect is considered as a source term, instead of applying hybrid type boundary conditions on the holes contours. Data from experimental tests, commercial three-dimensional code, and two-dimensional code are reported and compared to each other. Good agreement was found between numerical study and experiment.