Journal misalignment usually exists in journal bearings that affect nearly all the bearings static and dynamic characteristics including minimum oil film thickness, maximum oil film pressure, maximum oil film temperature, oil film stiffness, and damping. The main point in this study is to provide a comprehensive analysis on the oil film pressure, oil film temperature, oil film thickness, load-carrying capacity, oil film stiffness, and damping of journal bearing with different misalignment ratios and appropriately considering the turbulent and thermo effects based on solving the generalized Reynolds equation and energy equation. The results indicate that the oil thermo effects have a significant effect on the lubrication of misaligned journal bearings under large eccentricity ratio. The turbulent will obviously affect the lubrication of misaligned journal bearings when the eccentricity or misalignment ratio is large. In the present design of the journal bearing, the load and speed become higher and higher, and the eccentricity and misalignment ratio are usually large in the operating conditions. Therefore, it is necessary to take the effects of journal misalignment, turbulent, and thermal effect into account in the design and analysis of journal bearings.

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A trunnion joint is modeled as a circular plate with two types of outer boundary conditions. One is clamped supported and the other is simply supported. Symmetrical bending deflection is produced when an external force acts on the inner side of the circular plate. The governing equations of the circular plate with these two kinds of boundary conditions are solved by using finite difference method, and the axial stiffness of the circular plate is obtained according to the relationship between the external force and the bending deflection of the circular plate. In order to verify the accuracy of the finite difference method, a finite element method was also given. The effects of rotational speed and the ratio of inner radius to outer radius of the circular plate on the axial stiffness are studied. It is shown that the rotational speed can significantly affect the axial stiffness of the trunnion joint for these two cases, especially for a lower ratio of inner radius to outer radius of the circular plate. The axial stiffness increases monotonically with the increase in rotational speed. More specifically, for a lower ratio of inner radius to outer radius of the circular plate, the axial stiffness with the simply supported boundary condition at high rotational speed is more than twice as much as the case without considering the rotational speed. Correspondingly, it is more than one and a half times for the clamped supported boundary condition.

In this paper, a rotordynamic experiment on a compressor rotor system is presented and the feasibility of gas foil bearings with inhomogeneous bump foils is verified. A push–pull device is designed to obtain the stiffness curve and the nominal clearance of foil bearings. Operating points and dynamic coefficients of the rotor system at each rotating speed are predicted. In rotordynamic analysis, an alternative model of the impeller is proposed and the critical speed is predicted by employing the finite element method, in which the dynamic coefficients of inhomogeneous foil bearings are taken into account. Compared with the experimental result, the accuracy of the prediction for the critical speed is verified to be about 14% error. Two sets of foil bearings with 22 and 41 μm nominal clearance are manufactured and tested. Test results indicate that the vibration amplitude can be greatly reduced by diminishing the bearing clearance. When foil bearings with 22 μm clearance are used, the high-order harmonic frequencies of rotor vibration are significantly inhibited, and the amplitude of the rotating frequency is obviously restricted. Thus, the foil bearing with inhomogeneous bump foils tested in this paper can meet the speed requirement of the compressor when the nominal clearance is set at 22 μm.

Two multileaf gas foil journal bearings with backing bump foils and one set of gas foil thrust bearings were designed, fabricated, and used in a 100 kW class microturbine simulated rotor system to ensure stability of the system. Meanwhile, a preliminary test rig had been built to verify the simulated system stability. The rotor synchronous and subsynchronous responses were well controlled by using of the gas foil bearings. It is on the multileaf gas foil bearings with backing bump foils that the test was conducted and verified for the first time in open literatures. The success in the experiments shows that the design and fabrication of the rotor and the gas foil bearings can provide a useful guide to the development of the advanced high speed rotating machinery.

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