IJSRD - International Journal for Scientific Research & Development| Vol.

3, Issue 06, 2015 | ISSN (online): 2321-0613

CFD Simulation of Air Bearing Material

Nagendra Prasad Pandey1 Dr. Ashesh Tiwari2
1
M.E. Student 2Faculty
1,2
Department of Mechanical Engineering
1,2
IET DAVV, Indore,– India
Abstract— Geometric model and CFD simulation of Air
Bearing is presented, which allows to study the nature of
deformation in the bearing material. In this paper CREO 2.0
software code for geometric modeling of the air bearing.
Generated geometric model was imported in the finite
element software ANSYS and the CFD simulation was done
to simulate the deformation under radial fluid pressure in the
bearing material. Air has been used as the fluid film material
and three different materials has been used for bearing
material (casing). The proposed modeling and CFD
simulation has given to analyze stress in the different
bearing material and pressure variation in fluid film. The
study will help us to analyze more complicated problem and
selection of bearing material.
Key words: Air Bearing, Geometric Modeling, CFD
Simulation, Orifices, Casing

I. INTRODUCTION
The Air float compliant air bearing supports loads on a
cushion of air. It is a unique air support device, but may be
compared with two other forms of air supported devices: the
classical air bearing, and air cushion or “Hovercraft”.
The rigid air bearing can support large loads with
small unit pressures when a film of air is forced between the
support surface and the ground, but because this film is only
a few thousands of an inch thick, a very smooth and very
There are two main kinds of air bearing:
flat surface is required.
Unlike contact roller bearings, air bearings utilize a A. Aerostatic:
thin film of pressurized air to provide a „zero friction‟ load  Externally pressurized: A separate external supply of
bearing interface between surfaces that would otherwise be air is fed under pressure between the two surfaces
in contact with each other. Being non-contact, air bearings being kept apart. It is a continuous flow system where
avoid the traditional bearing-related problems of friction, pressurized gas from the source flows through
wear, and lubricant handling, and offer distinct advantages restrictors into the clearance between the bearing
in precision positioning and high speed applications. surfaces escaping to the atmosphere at the outside
The fluid film of the bearing is achieved by edges of the bearing.
supplying a flow of air through the bearing face and into the
 Types: Simple orifice fed, Pocketed orifice, Slot fed
bearing gap. This is typically accomplished through an
and Porous.
orifice or a porous media that restricts or meters the flow of
air into the gap. The restriction is designed such that, B. Aerodynamic:
although the air is constantly escaping from the bearing gap,  Self-generating: The supporting film is generated
the flow of pressurized air through the restriction is by the relative motion of the two surfaces being
sufficient to match the flow through the gap. It is the kept apart.
restriction through the gap that maintains the pressure under  An aerodynamic bearing can be of several types.
the bearing and supports the working load. If air pressure The design characteristics differ greatly between
were introduced to the gap without restriction, the flying journal and axial bearings and they can
height would be higher, the air consumption higher, and the suffer problems of instability.
stiffness would be lower than could be achieved with proper
 Types: Simple cylinders, Tri-lobe, Grooved (axial/
restriction. This restriction is referred to as air bearing
herringbone/ spiral) and Stepped.
compensation. It is used to optimize the bearing with respect
to lift, load, and stiffness for particular applications and will C. Advantages
be discussed later in more detail.  Wear less operation, durability
 Guiding, repeatability, and position accuracy
 Cost advantage and repeatability
 High-purity, oil-less operation

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 CFD Simulation of Air Bearing Material
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 Environmental advantages Diameter of bearing casing is 140 mm. The

Air bearings are composed of a cylindrical shaft of radius R, geometric model of bearing casing is illustrated in (Fig. 3.2)
called a journal, rotating with an angular velocity, ω, about having thickness of 10 mm and height of bearing casing is
its axis in a cylindrical bushing of radius R+c and length L. 35 mm.
The center of the bearing is labelled as Ob and the center of
journal as Oj as shown in figure 1.1. Under steady state
conditions the journal center remains at a constant
eccentricity e and attitude angle Φ for a given load W acting
on the shaft (Allaire et al. (1975), Allaire et al. (1980) ). The
air journal bearing is the simplest and most common radial
bearing, where a plain cylindrical shell encircles the shaft. Fig. 3.2 Helix Wire with Straight Core
Plain sleeve bearings have the highest cross coupling of all Diameter of shaft is 139.5 mm. The geometric
bearings and are suitable for highly loaded or low-speed model of shaft is illustrated in (Fig. 3.3).
shafts. Advantages are low cost and ease of manufacture.
Examples include automotive crankshaft bearings and low-
speed or highly loaded turbo machinery applications.
Air bearings may be further classified as central or
eccentrically loaded depending upon whether the load line
bisects the bearing pad arc or divides it eccentrically.
Typically the radius of the bearing is greater than the radius
of the journal by an amount equal to the radial clearance.
When the load applied is primarily unidirectional, there is Fig. 3.3 Top view of single strand wire rope
no need of full journal bearings and instead a single partial Overall assembly is illustrated in (Fig. 3.4).
arc bearing may be used (Allaire, 1987). Partial arc bearings Fig. 3.4 Geometrical model of single strand wire rope
are used in relatively low speed applications. The air may
also be designed with a hydrostatic recess thus enabling IV. FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS
fluid film lubrication due to both hydrostatic and
hydrodynamic effects. air bearings are important because The geometric model of the air bearing created in CREO 2.0
they form the building blocks for axial groove, multi-lobe was further imported in the finite element software ANSYS
and tilting pad bearings. 14.5, which was used for its finite element numerical
analysis. Finite element analysis is applied to simulate the
II. PROBLEM FORMULATION stress and deformation in the bearing material and to find
out the pressure variation in the air film. CFD solver was
In comparison with the theoretical analyses of air bearing used for this process.
material in this paper geometrical modal is prepared and is
CFD simulation is done and earlier it has been seen that
theoretical approach was not so accurate as well as it‟s
laborious so in this experiment geometrical model is
prepared in cre-o 2.0 and it‟s simulation and analysis is done
in ANSYS 14.5 and it‟s solution is obtained and there
results are compared and pressure variation in final film is
investigated.

III. GEOMETRIC MODELING

In this section CREO 2.0 software code for geometric
modelling of the air bearing is used. The generation of a Fig. 4.1 Geometrical model for air bearing imported in
computer geometric model for air film and bearing casing is ANSYS
created.
We have created individual geometric models for V. MATERIAL PROPERTIES
air film, bearing casing and shaft. The geometric model of The three different bearing material i.e. Cast iron, brass &
air film as illustrated in (Fig. 3.1) having effective thickness aluminium in which steel material is used as jounral.
0.25 mm. Diameter of air film is 139.5 mm and height of air Mechanical Property of the Cast iron, model having
film is 35 mm. modulus of elasticity E = 110 Gpa, the density is ρ = 7200
kg/m3 and the Poisson‟s ratio is υ = 0.28. Mechanical
Property of the Aluminium, model having modulus of
elasticity E = 71 Gpa, the density is ρ = 2770 kg/m3 and the
Poisson‟s ratio is υ = 0.33. Mechanical Property of the
Brass, model having modulus of elasticity E = 97 Gpa, the
density is ρ = 8490 kg/m3 and the Poisson‟s ratio is υ = 0.31.
The jouranal is made up of steel for which mechanical
Fig. 3.1 Single Helix Wire properties are, modulus of elasticity E = 205 Gpa, the
density is ρ = 7850 kg/m3 and the Poisson‟s ratio is υ = .30.

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 CFD Simulation of Air Bearing Material
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VI. MESH CONTROL

Meshing in ANSYS Workbench is to provide robust, easy to
use meshing tools that will simplify the mesh generation
process. The meshed model has total number of nodes
24338, solid elements 120362 and element size 2.e-003 m
for model. The meshed model is shown in Fig. 5.1

Fig. 5.4 Deformation obtained in cast iron model.

Fig 5.1: Meshing done for the model

VII. BOUNDARY CONDITIONS

In this analysis, we have 8 orfices in bearing through which
air is inlet at .7 Mpa and form a thin layer between shat and
bearing casing and this pressurized air form a thin layer and
which will avoid the contact between the bearing and shaft
and shaft will continuously rotate at 30000 rpm and the
weight of the shaft will act.

VIII. RESULT AND DISCUSSION

Resultant deformations, stresses in the bearing materials for Fig. 5.5 Stress obtained in cast iron model.
the model are obtained when the shaft is rotating at the
constant speed of 30000 rpm are shown in Figs.

Fig. 5.6 Deformation obtained in Brass model.

Fig. 5.2 Deformation obtained in aluminium model.

Fig. 5.3 Stress obtained in aluminium model. Fig. 5.7 Pressure distribution in air bearing

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 CFD Simulation of Air Bearing Material
(IJSRD/Vol. 3/Issue 06/2015/028)

Resultant deformations and stress for the various experimental validation. PhD thesis, Katholieke
materials of the bearing modal at the shaft rpm with the Universiteit Leuven - Dept. Mechanical Engineering,
corresponding air inlet pressure are shown in Table-1. 2009.
Air [9] J. M. Vance, Rotor dynamics of Turbo machinery. John
Total Von-
inlet Wiley & Sons, New York, 1987.
Bearing Shaft deformat mises weigh
pressur [10] L. San Andrés and D. Childs, Angled injection -
Material rpm i-on stress t (kg)
e hydrostatic bearings analysis and comparison to test
(mm) (Mpa)
(Mpa) results. Trans. ASME - Journal of Tribology,
Aluminu 3000 119(1):179–187, 1997.
0.7 2.81E-05 0.5831 0.216 [11] L. Della Pietra, G. Adiletta, The squeeze film damper
m 0
3000 over four decades of investigations, Part I:
cast iron 0.7 2.03E-05 0.65447 0.562 Characteristics and operating features. Shock and
0
3000 0.56755 Vibration Digest, 34(1):3-26, 2002.
Brass 0.7 1.77E-05 0.672 [12] T. Waumans, J. Peirs, F. Al-Bender, and D. Reynaerts,
0 7
Table 1: Air Inlet Pressure Design, optimisation and testing of a high-speed
aerodynamic journal bearing with a flexible, damped
IX. CONCLUSION support. in Proc. of the 9th International Workshop on
Micro and Nanotechnology for Power Generation and
In this paper geometric model of the Air bearing is Energy Conversion Applications, pp. 83-86,
presented. A finite element analysis with CFD solver is used Washington DC, USA, December 2009.
in the model for finding stress in different bearing material [13] T. Waumans, J. Peirs, F. Al-Bender, and D. Reynaerts,
i.e. cast iron; aluminum & brass and condition is when Aerodynamic journal bearing with a flexible, damped
spindle is rotating at 30000 rpm and air is inlet with through support operating at 7.2 million DN. in Proc. of the 10th
orifices. It is observed that the deformation obtained at International Workshop on Micro and Nanotechnology
various point in the bearing is directly proportional to stress for Power Generation and Energy Conversion
generated and bearing material properties. It also depends Applications, pp. 199-202, Leuven, Belgium, December
upon the rotation of the spindle and various loading 2010.
condition as well as geometrical parameters of the bearing
material.

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