• Tribology and Lubricants
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.114-121
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• 2005

As fuel cell system is environmental friendly generator, its performance depends on its air supply system. Because, fuel cell stack generates electrical energy by electron and the electron is generated by reacting between air and hydrogen. So, more and more compressed air is supplied, more and more the energy can be obtained. In this study, turbo-expander supported by air foil bearing is introduced as the air supply system used by fuel cell systems. The turbo-expander is a turbo machine which operates at high speed, so air foil bearings suit its purpose for the bearing elements. Analysis for confirming the stability and endurance is conducted. Based on FDM and Newton-Raphson method, characteristics of air foil bearing, dynamic coefficients, pressure field and load capacity, are obtained. Using the characteristics of air foil bearing, the rotordynamic analysis is performed by finite element method. The analysis (stability analysis and critical speed map) shows that turbo-expander is stability at running speed. After the analysis, the test process and results are presented. The goals of test are running up to 90,000 RPM, flow rate of 150 $m^3/h$ and pressure ratio of 1.15. The test results show that the aerodynamic performance and stability of turbo-expander are satisfied to the primary goals.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.47-55
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• 2008

Turbocharger has a main purpose on recycling of the exhaust gas from the engine cylinder. On the basis of the facility characteristics, the turbocharger supported on floating ring bearings has some problems such as the large volume, oil supplement for lubrication and high power loss due to high operating torque. The air foil bearing has been studied as the bearing element to be able to alternate the floating ring bearing without the problems of the floating ring bearing. In this study, the air foil bearing has 2 parts; journal and thrust bearings, and the test facility consists of the engine, exhaust and intake parts. In addiction, the specification of the turbocharger follows a small turbocharger for SUV engine. The engine speed is varied from 750 (idle rpm) to 2,500 rpm and then, the rotating speed of the turbocharger rotor is accelerated from 0 to 100,000 rpm. From those experiments, the comparison between the performances of the air foil bearing and floating ring bearing is conducted and the results show that the air foil bearing has less power loss, maximum 770 watt, than the floating ring bearing, maximum 5,110 watt. This result verifies that the air foil bearing is more efficient and able to output more power under the same condition of the input power.