Investigation of Journal Gas Foil Bearing Characteristics with Foils Prestress from Assembling Taken into Account

Investigation of journal gas foil bearing characteristics with foils prestress due to its installation into the bearing race with pretension is performed on the base of two-dimensional finite element model with contact interaction between bearing elements taken into account and verified versus static experimental data for nonrotating shaft taken from the open sources. Finite element simulation results show a good agreement with experimental and analytical data. Influence of top foil prestress due to its installation into the bearing race with pretension on bearing static elastic characteristics is demonstrated on the base of finite-element simulations considering light (top foil radius is close to the shaft journal radius) and strong (top foil radius is much greater than the shaft journal radius) top foil prestress.