.... Editor: J. Jeffrey Moore. 12 10 2012 11 05 2013 The foil bearing (FB) is one type of hydrodynamic bearing using air or another gas as a lubricant. When FBs are designed, installed, and operated properly, they are a very cost-effective and reliable solution for oil-free turbomachinery...

..., and maintenance-free operation, and foil bearings are at the center of the technology. Since their first commercial applications in the air cycle machines and auxiliary power units in 1970s, significant improvement has been made to the computational models for rotordynamic behavior. However, many technical issues...

...Tae Ho Kim; Anthony W. Breedlove; Luis San Andrés Oil-free turbomachinery relies on gas bearing supports for reduced power losses and enhanced rotordynamic stability. Gas foil bearings (GFBs) with bump-strip compliant layers can sustain large loads, both static and dynamic, and provide damping...

...Dong-Hyun Lee; Young-Cheol Kim; Kyung-Woong Kim To obtain the foil bearing characteristics, the fluid film pressure must be coupled with the elastic deformation of the foil structure. However, all of the structural models thus far have simplified the foil structure without consideration of its...

... an excellent agreement with an analytical model developed for the spring bumps. Load capacity, structural stiffness, and equivalent viscous damping (and structural loss factor) were measured to demonstrate the feasibility of the new foil bearing. Orbit and coast-down simulations using the calculated stiffness...

...Daejong Kim Experimental and analytical studies on air foil bearings have been performed extensively over the past decades, and significant improvement in load capacity and rotor dynamics stability have been reported. Often, advanced air foil bearings are believed to have complicated bump foil...

...Erik E. Swanson Foil bearings are a key enabling technology for advanced and oil-free rotating machinery. In certain applications, they provide a level of performance that is difficult or impossible to match with other technologies. A number of reasonably successful analytical techniques to predict...