A rotor supported by gas bearings vibrates within the clearance. If the static imbalance of the rotor is large, even if the rotation speed is low, large amplitude vibration is generated by the centrifugal force. This is a serious problem because the risk of bearing damage increases. In order to solve this problem, an externally pressurized gas journal bearing with asymmetrically arranged gas supply holes has been developed. This type of bearing has a large load capacity as compared with the conventional symmetric gas supply bearing because pressurized gases are supplied to the loaded and counter-loaded side bearing surfaces via asymmetrically arranged gas supply holes. The bearing has a new gas supply mechanism in which gas is supplied from the rotor through inherent orifices. The characteristics of the developed bearing are beneficial from the viewpoint of using the bearing in rotational-type vibration exciters. In other words, this rotor has a large static imbalance. Numerical calculations of the characteristics of this bearing were performed, and the resulting characteristics were compared with those of a conventional symmetric gas supply journal bearing. The bearing load capacity of the developed bearing is considerably larger than that of conventional symmetric type bearings. The load capacity increases owing to the asymmetry of the gas supply holes. In the controlled gas supply pressure condition, rotor radial vibration during rotation can theoretically be zero. A test rig and gas control system to realize vibration reduction was constructed. A rotational test under the gas pressure control condition was conducted using a large unbalanced rotor taking advantage of this property. The control program was constructed using matlab and simulink. The devices were driven by a digital signal processor. The magnitude of the unbalance of the rotor is 13.5 × 10−3 kg m. The bearing diameter and length were 60 and 120 mm, respectively. The rotational vibration amplitude decreased at a high rotational frequency under the proposed bearing configuration, although the amplitude increases monotonically with the frequency in the conventional bearing. When the gas supply pressure was controlled synchronously with the rotation frequency modulation of the large unbalanced rotor, the amplitude of the vibration amplitude was greatly reduced. The rotor of the test rig was safely supported by this bearing, and effective data for practical operation were obtained.
Experimental verification of externally pressurized gas journal bearings with asymmetric gas supply (Supply gas pressure control operation using a small size test rig)