Entrance Effect on Load Capacity of Orifice Compensated Aerostatic Bearing with Feeding Pocket

The current research of the aerostatic thrust bearing mainly focuses on the porous material bearing and inherent compensated air bearing, which aims at obtaining small physical dimension and large load capacity. Although porous material bearing appears larger load capacity, materials anisotropy itself and void content distortion caused in heat-treating, and machining processes add greater complexity to internal flow transfer process. Inherent compensated air bearing has the advantages of simple structure and good stability, but its load capacity and static stiffness is not worth somewhat. In this paper, based on hydrostatic lubrication theory, finite volume method is presented for taking entrance effects into account in computing pressure distribution, load capacity and mass flow rates of circular aerostatic thrust bearings. Technical analysis, numerical simulations and laboratory demonstration tests of influence of pocket diameter and pocket depth on loading capacity of aerostatic thrust bearing are carried out on simple orifice compensated air bearings with feeding pockets. The static parameters, such as air consumption and pressure distributions, are measured as a function of supply pressure and air gap height for several different orifices and pockets size. Entrance effects are described in term of typical throttling types, and the effect of pocket diameter and pocket depth on load capacity is systematically described respectively. The proposed research results uncover the causation of throttling action of the orifice compensated air bearing with feed pocket and further develop and improve the design theory of air bearing.