Total Cross Flow (TCF) Hydrostatic Journal Bearing: A Review

Abstract

Hydrostatic bearings are used extensively in machine tool application due to their high load carrying capacity, no stick-slip, very low friction at low or zero speed, high stiffness and damping characteristics. If the features of circumferential grooved land and external return flow system incorporate in the conventional Hydrostatic bearing design , it turns to a new bearing design that is Total Cross Flow (TCF design = Conventional design + Circumferential grooved land + External return flow system) hydrostatic bearing. This new externally pressurized bearing overcomes most of the side effect of conventional journal Bearing (CJB) like undesirable hydrodynamic effect associated with the oil turbulence and critical rise in temperature. TCF bearing are also consider suitable for high speed application along with good damping and stiffness characteristic with low temperature rise. Reduce drag power loss, fast temperature stabilization, and stability at high rotational speed are the other meritorious properties of TCF bearing. A detailed summery of literature review on TCF bearing covering different performance characteristics like total power loss, recesses pressure, squeeze load, temperature distribution, fluid flow, damping and stiffness coefficients are discussed and tabulated. It is observed through literature review that most of the studies on TCF journal bearing are experimental except analytical study made by Kumar et al. [7] and it is emphasized to carry out analytical and modeling work to validate or to analyze different features and aspects related to bearing configuration, lubricant properties, and type of restrictors etc.