Influences of the geometrical parameters of aerostatic thrust bearing with pocketed orifice-type restrictor on its performance

This paper describes the study on the performance of aerostatic thrust bearing with pocketed orifice -type restrictor. Firstly, the performance of the bearings with different geometrical parameters was simulated and some experiments were made to verify the simulations. Then, the rational dimension of this kind of bearing is obtained by analyzing the influences of the bearing's geometrical parameters on its load carrying capacity (LCC), stiffness, mass flow rate (MFR) and the maximum gas velocity (MGV). Therefore, the design and optimization of the bearing is simplified, and further analysis shows that ignoring the influences of orifice length on the bearing's performance will result in large errors, when orifice diameter is small enough. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.