Performance Analysis of Oil Lubricated Foil Bearing With Flexible Supported Back Spring Structure—Part I: Model Development and Numerical Investigation

Abstract

A new type of multileaf oil lubricated foil bearing with flexible supported back spring structure was proposed to satisfy the requirement of high rotating velocity for turbo pump, where the rotor was submerged in the hydraulic oil. The numerical analysis was carried out in this paper. Based on the structure of oil foil bearing, the film thickness model was established without foil deformation. By employing Castigliano's theorem, the total flexibility matrix including the elastic back spring and cantilevered curved beam was calculated, and then compared with commercial finite element software to verify the accuracy of the proposed model. The obtained flexibility matrix was brought into the static and dynamic oil lubricated Reynolds equation. The Reynolds boundary condition was considered to simulate the oil film rupture effect. The deformation equation for the structure and the Reynolds equation were solved coupled by the successive over relaxation method. The static and dynamic characteristics of the oil lubricated multileaf foil bearing with supported back spring were acquired. The effect of the foil thickness on the load capacity was discussed. The variation of the dynamic coefficients with bearing load was acquired. By employing Routh–Hurwitz method, the stability of the bearing was analyzed. The results indicated that the load capacity of the foil bearing with back supported spring was bigger than that of the foil bearing without back supported spring. The stability characteristics of the foil bearing with back supported structure was better than traditional rigid self-acting bearing, particular for the high rotating speed case.