Experimental investigation on the start-stop performance of gas foil bearings-rotor system in the centrifugal air compressor for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles

The start-stop performance of gas foil bearings (GFBs)-rotor system directly affects the operation range and energy consumption of the air compressor for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles which has the inherent characteristic of frequent start and stop. In this paper, the effects of three factors including cooling gas flow, cooling gas pressure, and cooling gas type on the start-stop performance of the GFBs-rotor system are experimentally investigated for the first time. Based on the start-stop response analysis, the take-off speed of 6576 rpm and power consumption of 0.61 kW for the optimum GFBs-rotor system are obtained. The performance of the proposed system for the centrifugal air compressor is compared with the commercial products. The comparison shows that the lowest speed can be decreased by 34.2% while the operating range is expanded by 8.6%, which can in turn improve the performance of the centrifugal air compressors in hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.