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Gas journal bearings have been increasingly adopted in modern turbo-machinery applications as they meet the demands of operation at high rotational speeds, in clean environment, and with great efficiency. Due to the fact that gaseous lubricants, typically air, have much lower viscosity than more conventional oils, carrying capacity and dynamic characteristics of passive systems are generally poorer. In order to enhance these characteristics, one solution is used to combine the aerodynamic effect with the addition of external pressurization. This study presents a detailed mathematical model for hybrid lubrication of a compressible fluid-film journal bearing. Additional forces are generated by injecting pressurized air into the bearing gap through orifices located on the bearing walls. A modified form of the compressible Reynolds equation for active lubrication is derived. By solving this equation, stiffness and damping coefficients can be determined. A multibody dynamics model of a global system comprised of rotor and hybrid journal bearing is built in order to study the lateral dynamics of the system. Campbell diagrams and stability maps are presented, showing the main advantages and drawbacks of this special kind of hybrid fluid-film bearing.

Along with traditional oil lubrication, increasing demand for high-speed applications has renewed attention to gas bearings technology. Traditional aerostatic and aerodynamic gas lubrication has been widely used in a variety of applications, ranging from high-speed spindles to micro and meso-scale turbo-machinery. The present paper deals with experimental rotordynamic testing of a flexible rotor supported by hybrid aerostatic-aerodynamic gas journal bearing equipped with an electronic radial air injection system. From a rotordynamic point of view there are two phenomena that limit the widespread of traditional gas lubrication: 1) Low damping makes operation across critical speed dangerous, as even low level of unbalance can generate large vibration responses. This is especially problematic for gas bearing applications, which often operate in the supercritical region. Moreover, 2) An upper bound to supercritical operation is determined by the appearance of subsynchronous whirl instability. Due to the sudden increase in amplitude with respect to speed, this most often corresponds to the maximal attainable rotational speed of the system. Postponing the onset speed of instability poses therefore one of the greatest challenges in a high-speed gas bearing design. A great deal of research is devoted to attack such issues, where most propose passive designs such as compliant foil bearings, tilting pad and flexure pivot gas bearings. These solutions proved to be effective in improving static and dynamic properties of the bearings, however issues related to the manufacturing and accuracy of predictions has so far limited their applications. Another drawback is that passive bearings offer a low degree of flexibility, meaning that an accurate optimization is necessary for each application. The developed prototype active bearing offers several promising performance enhancements. Synchronous vibrations can be effectively addressed ensuring safe operation across the critical speeds; whirling instability is suppressed; intervening on the software, rather than the hardware can modify the response of the system. Implementing active lubrication adds however a considerable number of parameters and variables. The performance of a good control system lays most importantly on a good choice of control gains, which in general are different depending on the goal of the controller. Optimum tuning of the control loop is addressed experimentally, showing dependency on the supply pressure and, less prominently, the rotational velocity.

No abstract

The lateral rotordynamic response of turbomachinery is typically speed dependent due to hydrodynamic lubricated bearings, seals, gyroscopic and centrifugal effects, etc. Rotordynamic tools are used to predict the behavior of the machine during operation, however validating these results is challenging. Traditional experimental modal testing techniques rely on controlled and measured excitation together with measured responses. However, during operation this is unpractical, as the actual excitation force is rarely known. Operational modal analysis (OMA) can identify the modal parameters of a system over its entire operational range from measurement of response due to some (unknown) excitation. OMA has proven successful on non-rotating structures, but has seldom been applied to rotating machinery. Three case studies are presented demonstrating the use of OMA in identifying lateral rotors modes based on measurements from existing radial proximity probes during normal production undertaken as part of commissioning campaigns. Challenges encountered in using and interpreting OMA results are discussed. The results show that proximity probe data acquired during normal operation may be used as input to OMA for the assessment of stability margins of rotating machinery, to produce experimentally derived Campbell diagrams and to identify backwards as well as forwards whirling modes.