Abstract
This paper describes the characteristics of circular aerostatic thrust bearing with a single air supply hole. In case of high air supply pressure or large bearing clearance, it was reported that shock wave occurs and forms complex fluid structure in the bearing clearance. However, it is very difficult to obtain the information of flow structure in detail from flow visualization because of very narrow clearance. Therefore, the flow field was calculated using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and pressure distribution in the bearing clearance was measured. It was consequently found that pressure distributions obtained by CFD are good agreement with experimental data and that CFD is useful for prediction of pressure distribution in bearing clearance of circular aerostatic thrust bearing.
