Effect of Surface Roughness on Lubrication Performance of Bump-Type Gas Foil Bearings

Taking bump-type gas foil bearings as the research object,a deformation model of bump foil and a thin-plate finite element model of top foil were proposed.By solving Reynolds equation and energy equation,the pressure distribution and the temperature distribution of gas films in foil bearings were obtained.Further,a numerical method for calculating the lubrication performance of gas foil bearings with considering the surface roughness was proposed.With a specific example,effects of the surface roughness on the bearing lubrication performance were parametrically studied.The results indicate that rougher journal surface can lead to larger fluctuation of the lubrication performance,while surface roughness of top foil has few effects on the fluctuation.Moreover,the mean values of performance parameters almost remain constant at different values of surface roughness.