Abstract
This paper describes the viscosity variation of a liquid crystal under electric field, and its application to a controllable sliding bearing. Liquid crystal is known as a homogeneous organic liquid characterized by the long-range order of its molecular orientation. When an electric field is applied to a liquid crystal film as lubricant, the orientational order of molecules become parallel to the applied field, whch causes apparent viscosity variation. In this paper, a controllable slinding bearing system was constructed and its dynamic characteristics were studied. When step load or sinusoidal load was applied to the bearing pad, the film thickness was successfully controlled by a conventional PID controller. The response frequency was also studied in the experiment.
