Performance of Relative Clearance Ratio of Floating Ring Bearing for Turbocharger-Rotor System Stability

Abstract

The floating ring bearing (FRB) has been widely used in the field of high-speed rotating machinery such as turbochargers, aviation engines and so on, because of its simple structure, high efficiency and low power consumption. In order to obtain the best ratio between inter-oil clearance and shaft radius of the floating ring bearing necessitates the design reference of dimensional parameters for the design of floating ring bearings. This study, based on the transfer-matrix method, developed the dynamic model of the floating ring bearing-rotor system, and, using the Runge–Kutta analysis method for floating ring bearings, the influence of oil film relative clearance ratio of floating rings on rotor system stability was analyzed and studied. The optimum clearance ratio between inner oil film and the shaft of floating ring bearings is λ = 0.01. This research can provide some theoretical support for the design of parameters and fault diagnosis of rotor floating ring bearing systems.