Rotordynamic Performance of Hybrid Air Foil Bearings With Regulated Hydrostatic Injection

Air foil bearing (AFB) technology has made substantial advancement during the past decades and found its applications in various small turbomachinery. However, rotordynamic instability, friction and drag during the start/stop, and thermal management are still challenges for further application of the technology. Hybrid air foil bearing (HAFB), utilizing hydrostatic injection of externally pressurized air into the bearing clearance, is one of the technology advancements to the conventional AFB. Previous studies on HAFBs demonstrate the enhancement in the load capacity at low speeds, reduction or elimination of the friction and wear during starts/stops, and enhanced heat dissipation capability. In this paper, the benefit of the HAFB is further explored to enhance the rotordynamic stability by employing a controlled hydrostatic injection. This paper presents the analytical and experimental evaluation of the rotordynamic performance of a rotor supported by two three-pad HAFBs with the controlled hydrostatic injection, which utilizes the injections at particular locations to control eccentricity and attitude angle. The simulations in both time domain orbit simulations and frequency-domain modal analyses indicate a substantial improvement of the rotor-bearing performance. The simulation results were verified in a high-speed test rig (maximum speed of 70,000 rpm). Experimental results agree with simulations in suppressing the subsynchronous vibrations but with a large discrepancy in the magnitude of the subsynchronous vibrations, which is a result of the limitation of the current modeling approach. However, both simulations and experiments clearly demonstrate the effectiveness of the controlled hydrostatic injection on improving the rotordynamic performance of AFB.