• Tribology and Lubricants
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• v.36 no.6
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• pp.332-341
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• 2020

High-speed turbomachinery implements gas foil bearings (GFBs) due to their distinctive advantages, such as high efficiency, lesser part count, and lower weight. This paper provides the test results of the static structural stiffnesses and loss factors of bump-type foil thrust bearings with increasing preload and bearing deflection. The focus of the current work is to experimentally quantify variability in structural stiffnesses and loss factors among the four test thrust bearings with identical design values and material of the bump and top foil geometries using the same (open-source) fabrication method. A simple test setup, using a rigidly mounted non-rotating shaft and thrust disk, measures the bearing bump deflections with increasing static loads on the test bearing. The inner and outer diameters of the test bearings are 41 mm and 81 mm, respectively. The loss factor, best-representing energy dissipation in the test bearings, is estimated from the area inside the local hysteresis loop of the load versus the bearing deflection curve. The measurements show that structural stiffnesses and loss factors of the test bearings significantly rely on applied preloads and bearing deflections. Local structural stiffnesses of the test bearings increase with applied preloads but decrease with bearing deflections. Changes of loss factors are less sensitive to applied preloads and bearing deflections compared to those of structural stiffnesses. Up to 35% variability in static load structural stiffnesses is found between bearings, while up to 30% variability in loss factors is found between bearings.

• Tribology and Lubricants
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.292-297
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• 2009

Air foil thrust bearings are the critical components available on high-efficiency turbomachinery which need an ability to endure the large axial force. Air foil bearings are self-acting hydrodynamic bearings that use ambient air as their lubricant. Since the air is squeezed by the edge of compliance-surface of bearing, hydrodynamic force is generated. In this study, we measured the air film thickness and obtained the minimum film thickness experimentally. To increase the maximum load capacity, compliance of sub-structure was controlled. From numerical analyses, it is seen that, if the air film thickness is distributed more uniformly by variable compliance, the thrust bearings can take more axial load.

• 유체기계공업학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2006.08a
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• pp.331-334
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• 2006

Air foil bearings have been attempted for application to industrial turbo machines, since they have several advantages over oil bearings in terms of endurance, simplicity, environment-friendliness, efficiency, sound and vibration, and small turbo machines with air foil bearings are in the market as the result. Recently, researches on widening the application spectrum of air foil bearings are in progress worldwide. In this paper, a 300 HP class turbo blower using air foil bearings is introduced. The turbo blower has a high speed PMSM(Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor) driving a compressor, and air flow rate is designed to be $180\;m^3/min$ at pressure ratio of 1.6. The maximum rotational speed is set to 17,000 RPM to maximize the total efficiency with the result that the weight of rotor assembly is 26kg, which is expected to be the largest turbo machine with air foil bearings ever developed in the world.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2004.11a
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• pp.677-684
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• 2004

This paper describes a method for identifying the dynamic characteristics of air foil bearings for high speed turbomachinerys with the LS/IV method. In fact identifying the characteristics of air foil bearings is very difficult work, and it is tried to identify it. Experiments were conducted to determine the structural dynamic and hydrodynamic characteristics of air foil bearings. Numerical predictions compare the static and dynamic force performances. The housing of the bearing on the journal was driven by the impact hammer which were used to simulate impact force acting on air foil bearings. The characteristics of air foil bearings were extracted from the frequency response function (FRF) by LS(Least Square) method and IV(Instrumental Variable) method. The experiment was tested at 0 rpm and $10000\sim16000rpm$. And the test results were introduced about the dynamic characteristics of air foil bearings, and also compared with theoritical results.

• 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.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2003.05a
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• pp.94-99
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• 2003

As the rotating speed of rotors is increased, the instability and power loss become serious problems. Gas bearings are introduced as a good solution to those problems. But in the development of gas bearings, high load capacity and high damping force to vibrations are required. In this study a new air bearing using leaf spring pad is introduced to improve load capacity and damping force. The experimental results of the leaf spring pad air bearings show high load capacity and high damping forces. And the results show that leaf spring pad air bearings can be simultaneously acted as radial and thrust bearings

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers Conference
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• 1998.04a
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• pp.235-240
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• 1998

The inlet pressure build-up at the leading edge of bearings and its effects on the static performances are investigated theoretically. The performance analyses of air-lubricated tilting pad bearings are carried out considering the inlet pressure which is obtained by means of momentum conservation method. The results show that inlet pressure is above atmosphere pressure in front of leading edge of tilting pad bearing and there is a significant influence of the inlet pressure on the performance of bearings.

• Tribology and Lubricants
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.57-64
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• 2011

Hybrid air-foil magnetic bearing integrates two oil free bearing technologies synergetically to adopt the strengths of two bearings with minimizing their weaknesses. This paper presents bending mode vibration control of a flexible shaft supported by the hybrid air-foil magnetic bearing. An experiment set-up of a flexible shaft supported by the hybrid air-foil magnetic bearing is built. In order to verify the effectiveness of the hybrid bearing, unbalance responses of the flexible shaft supported by three different bearings: air-foil, magnetic and hybrid bearings are compared. Effect of load sharing between air-foil and magnetic bearings are investigated through changing the control gain and the rotor center position of magnetic bearing. The experimental results shows that the hybrid bearing can control the bending mode vibration of the flexible shaft effectively and an optimal performance can be achieved with an appropriate load sharing between the air-foil and the magnetic bearings.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.25 no.12
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• pp.132-138
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• 2008

Recently, mastering processes for high density optical disc such as Blu-ray disc rely on electron beams, which are operable in only vacuum. In the mastering process, one of the most important tasks is to design precision stages for providing precise positioning of the works with respect to the source in a high vacuum environment. In this paper, we have developed a precision rotation table usable in the electron beam mastering. The rotation table adopted air bearings for a high positioning repeatability and velocity stability. The air leakage from the air bearings has been minimized by employing the differential exhaust scheme using three steps of air drain. The design parameters such as diameters of exhaust lines, seal lengths, and pumping speeds were decided according to the optimization method using genetic algorithm. The performance on the vacuum level of the rotation table was evaluated experimentally and theoretically. The results indicate that a vacuum level of $10^{-4}$ Pa is achieved with operation of air bearings in a vacuum chamber, which is sufficient for the electron beam mastering.

• Tribology and Lubricants
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• v.33 no.6
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• pp.309-314
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• 2017

This paper presents a theoretical investigation of the dynamic characteristics of externally pressurized air pad bearings with closed loop grooves. These grooves are made on the surface of bearings to reduce the number of supply holes so that manufacturing costs can be reduced. The semi-implicit method is applied to calculate the time varying pressure profile on the air bearing surface owing to the advantages of numerical stability and fast time tracing characteristics. The static pressure of the groove bearings is much higher than that without grooves, so the groove bearings can provide high load carrying capacity. The equation of motion considering vertical motion and tilting motion are also solved using the Runge-Kutta 4th order method. By combining the semi-implicit method and the Runge-Kutta method, fast calculations of the dynamic behavior of the air bearing can be achieved. The variations of bearing reaction force, air film reaction moment, height, and tilting angle are investigated for the step force input, which is 20% higher than the bearing reaction, when the nominal clearance is 6 mm. The effect of the groove width and the groove depth are investigated by calculating the dynamic behavior. The possibility of the air hammering with the depth of the groove is found and discussed.