Investigations on characteristics of micro/meso scale gas foil journal bearings for 100-200 W class micro power systems using first order slip velocity boundary conditions and the effective viscosity model

In this paper, a modified compressible Reynolds equation for micro/meso scale gas foil journal bearings considering first order slip and effective viscosity under rarefied flow conditions is presented. The influence of rarefaction effect on the load carrying capacity, attitude angle, speed and frequency dependent stiffness and damping coefficients, modal impedance, natural frequencies and unbalance response is studied. From numerical analysis, it has been found that there is significant change in all the static and dynamic characteristics predicted by the no-slip model and model with effective viscosity. There is also a considerable difference between the values predicted by a model with effective viscosity and a model without effective viscosity. For a given eccentricity ratio, the influence of effective viscosity on load carrying capacity and attitude angle is more significant for the typical operating speed range of micro/meso scale gas turbines. The influence of effective viscosity decreases with increase in compliance of bearing structure. Similarly, the influence of effective viscosity on frequency dependent stiffness and damping coefficients increases with excitation frequency ratio. Significant change in natural frequency, modal impedance and unbalance response for model with no slip and slip with effective viscosity is observed. The influence of effective viscosity is found to be significant with increase in Knudsen number.