Investigations of Slip Effect on the Performance of Micro Gas Bearings and Stability of Micro Rotor-Bearing Systems

Abstract: Incorporating the velocity slip effect of the gas flow at the solid boundary, theperformance and dynamic response of a micro gas-bearing-rotor system are investigated inthis paper. For the characteristic length scale of the micro gas bearing, the gas flow in thebearing resides in the slip regime rather than in the continuum regime. The modifiedReynolds equations of different slip models are presented. Gas pressure distribution and loadcarrying capacity are obtained by solving the Reynolds equations with finite differentmethod (FDM). Comparing results from different models, it is found that the second orderslip model agrees reasonably well with the benchmarked solutions obtained from thelinearized Boltzmann equation. Therefore, dynamic coefficients derived from the secondorder slip model are employed to evaluate the linear dynamic stability and vibrationcharacteristics of the system. Compared with the continuum flow model, the slip effectreduces dynamic coefficients of the micro gas bearing, and the threshold speed for stableoperation is consequently raised. Also, dynamic analysis shows that the system responseschange with variation of the operating parameters including the eccentricity ratio, therotational speed, and the unbalance ratio.