Identification of frequency-dependent dynamic characteristics of a bump structure for gas-foil bearings via 1-DOF shaker tests under air pressurization

Recently, the importance of rotordynamic stability has been increased because of the tendency to employ ultra-high speeds in rotating machinery. In particular, the dynamic characteristics of gas bearings for high-speed rotating machinery need to be identified at various excitation frequencies to predict the rotor's behavior. In this study, we perform dynamic loading tests for gas-foil bearings (GFBs) to determine the bump foil structure and an air-film combined bump-foil structure for varying excitation frequencies. We calculate the dynamic characteristics from the measured force and displacement data. The air film is generated by a pressurized air supply. Based on the results, the stiffness coefficients of the bump structure and the air-film combined bump structure increased, while the damping coefficients decreased at increasing excitation frequencies. Further, the stiffness and damping coefficients of the airfilm combined structure show lower values than those of the bump structure. Consequently, we identify the frequency-dependent dynamic characteristics of the bump structure and the effect of gas film on the dynamic characteristics of GFBs. Furthermore, to reveal the effectiveness of the proposed method, we perform experiments and discuss two methods of extracting the dynamic characteristics from the measured data.