Microvibration suppression of an aerostatic thrust bearing adopting flow field disturbance structure

Abstract

The locally unsteady flow field near the orifice outlet of an aerostatic thrust bearing causes the gas pressure fluctuation on the bearing surface, which induces microvibration even if an invariable load acts on the bearing. In this article, flow field disturbance structure was designed for the air chamber of an aerostatic thrust bearing to change the microscopic flow field inside the bearing. Numerical calculation showed that flow field disturbance structure altered the gas flow characteristics in local flow field near the orifice outlet. Moreover, the fluctuating pressure on the bearing surface decreased obviously. Experiments demonstrated that the microvibration of the bearing with flow field disturbance structure was suppressed evidently. Furthermore, the influence of flow field disturbance structure parameters on the microvibration was analyzed experimentally.