Foil gas bearings are in widespread commercial use in air cycle machines, turbocompressors and microturbine generators and are emerging in more challenging applications such as turbochargers, auxiliary power units and propulsion gas turbines. Though not well known, foil bearing technology is well over fifty years old. Recent technological developments indicate that their full potential has yet ...

Compliant foil gas lubricated bearings are used for the support of light loads in the order of few kilograms at high speeds, in the order of 50,000 RPM. The stiffness of the foil bearings depends both on the stiffness of the compliant foil and on the lubricating gas film. The stiffness of the bearings plays a crucial role in the stable operation of the supported rotor over a range of speeds. Th...

An efficient finite element scheme for solving the non-linear Reynolds equation for compressible fluid coupled to compliant structures is presented. The method is general and fast and can be used in the analysis of airfoil bearings with simplified or complex foil structure models. To illustrate the computational performance, it is applied to the analysis of a compliant foil bearing modelled usi...

Gas foil bearings (GFBs) are finding widespread usage in oil-free turbo expanders, APUs and micro gas turbines for distributed power due to their low drag friction and ability to tolerate high level vibrations, including transient rubs and severe misalignment, static and dynamic. The static load capacity and dynamic forced performance of GFBs depends largely on the material properties of the su...

This Note proposes a novel radial-thrust combo metal mesh foil bearing (MMFB). Although MMFBs have advantages such as higher stiffness and damping over conventional air foil bearings, studies related to MMFBs have been limited to radial MMFBs. The novel combo MMFB is composed of a radial top foil, thrust top foils, and a ring-shaped metal mesh damper--fabricated by compressing a copper wire mes...