Study on Spirally-wound Gas Foil Journal Bearings

Abstract

Aerodynamic foil bearings have been successfully applied to micro-gas turbines used for distributed electric power supply. Aerodynamic foil bearings have such advantages that they can operate at high temperature and high speeds. In this paper, the static characteristics of aerodynamic gas foil journal bearings at high speeds are investigated theoretically and experimentally, using a spirally-wound foil bearing with half-spherical bumps and the usefulness of this type of foil bearing is clarified.