• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2003.06a
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• pp.355-358
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• 2003

This paper presents characteristics of vacuum preloaded porous air bearing. Pressure distribution of a porous pad and vacuum pocket are calculated. And load capacity and stiffness of the bearing are analyzed with various vacuum parameters, that is. clearance height. tube diameter, tube length. pumping speed of vacuum pump, vacuum pocket to porous pad area ratio. From the simulation results, optimum clearance for best performance can be selected adjusting these parameters, especially tube diameter which is the most dominant source.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.30 no.12
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• pp.1327-1333
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• 2013

Air bearings are widely used in precision stages because of low friction and high motion accuracy, however, they suffer from low stiffness in comparison with rolling bearings or hydrostatic bearings. So, several preloading methods using weight, magnet and vacuum force, and opposing pads have been used to increase the stiffness of the air bearings. In this paper, pressure distributions of the vacuum preloaded porous air bearings are calculated using the proposed method. And then, the load capacity and stiffness are analyzed. For the vacuum preloaded air bearings, the stiffness is increased owing to reduced bearing clearance by vacuum force. The simulation results indicate that variation of vacuum pressure with clearance in the vacuum pocket gives rise to low stiffness, so the vacuum pocket should be designed for pressure to be constantly maintained regardless of the bearing clearance by means of large effective pumping speed.