Theoretical Investigation on Performance Characteristics of Aerostatic Journal Bearings with Active Displacement Compensator

Active aerostatic bearings are capable of providing negative compliance, which can be successfully used to automatically compensate for deformation of the machine tool system in order to reduce the time and improve the quality of metalworking. The article considers an aerostatic radial bearing with external combined throttling systems and an elastic displacement compensator, which is an alternative to aerostatic bearings with air flow rate compensators. The results of the mathematical modeling and theoretical research of stationary and nonstationary modes of operation of bearings with slotted and diaphragm throttling systems are presented. A counter-matrix sweep method has been developed for solving linear and nonlinear boundary value problems in partial derivatives with respect to the function of the square of the pressure in the bearing gap and inter-throttling bearing cavities for any values of the relative shaft eccentricity. A numerical method is proposed for calculating the dynamic quality criteria, and the transfer function of the dynamic compliance of a bearing with small displacements is considered as a linear automatic control system with distributed parameters. An experimental verification of the theoretical characteristics of the bearing was carried out, which showed a satisfactory correspondence among the compared data. It is shown that bearings with a throttle system have the best quantitative and qualitative load characteristics. The possibility of optimal determination of the values of a number of important parameters that provide the bearing with optimal performance and a high stability margin is established. It is shown that bearings with an elastic suspension of the movable sleeve allow one to compensate for significant movements, which can be larger than the size of the air gap by an order of magnitude or more. In these conditions, similar bearings with air flow compensators would be obviously inoperative.