Howard, S.A., Della Corte, C., Valco, M.J., Prahl, J.M. and Heshmat, H. “Steady-State Stiffness of Foil Air Journal Bearings at Elevated Temperatures,” STLE 56th Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL, May 20, 2001, (2001) Tribology Transactions, Volume 44 (3), pp. 489-493.
A previously developed test method for measuring steady-state stiffness of foil air journal bearings is extended to measure trends in baring stiffness at high temperature. Steady-state stiffness of the tested foil bearing is found to decrease in general as the temperature increases from 25º to 538ºC. The magnitude of stiffness change observed is roughly a factor of two, which is important information for the design of future high speed turbomachinery. It is expected that damping in foil bearings may also be affected by changes in temperature necessitating future testing to evaluate the trends in dynamic bearing characteristics.