The Air Lubrication Behavior of a Kingsbury Thrust Bearing Demonstration

Self-acting Air-lubricated Bearing without Oil Lubrication

One of the advanced technologies incorporated into a micro gas turbine (MGT) is the dynamic air-lubricated (no oil lubrication) bearing. We investigated the performance characteristics of a self-acting air-lubricated bearing in a 50-kWe MGT. From the results of our experiments, we were able to clarify the following. (1) The thrust load of 300 N incurred by a 50kWe MGT cannot be supported by the...

Mixed Lubrication of Coupled Journal-Thrust-Bearing Systems Including Mass Conserving Cavitation

A mixed lubrication model is developed to investigate the lubrication of coupled journalthrust-bearing systems. The governing equations are mapped into a computational domain with a conformal mapping technique developed in a previous study by Wang et al. (2002). In order to study the influence of the boundary conditions on the performance of the bearing system, either the Reynolds boundary cond...

The True Cost of Bearing Lubrication

Air cushioning with a lubrication/inviscid balance

The air cushioning effect in the gap between an almost inviscid body of water and a nearby solid wall (or another body of water) is studied theoretically and is found to depend on predominantly lubricating forces in the air, in certain applications. The situation in which the density and viscosity in air are taken as small compared with those in water is investigated. In this situation potentia...

On a mathematical model of journal bearing lubrication

We consider the steady motion of an incompressible fluid whose viscosity depends on the pressure and the shear rate. The system is completed by suitable boundary conditions involving nonhomogeneous Dirichlet, Navier’s slip and inflow/outflow parts. We prove the existence of weak solutions and show that the resulting level of the pressure is fixed by the boundary conditions. The problem is motiv...