The two major advantages of gas bearings compared to other lubricated bearings are inherently low viscosities and their chemical stability over a wide temperature range. Furthermore, the usage of gas lubrication can lead to auxiliary benefits, depending on the application. For example, a simpler lubrication supply, a contamination free environment, less maintenance and less noise generation. All these reason could additionally lead to reduced manufacturing- and maintenance costs.

Unfortunately, in gas bearing mounted rotors are prone for instabilities. Reasons are, for example, the low viscosity of the fluid film, resulting in a low damping characteristic and self-excited vibrations, caused by the bearing reacting forces. Consequently, a proper designing- and dimensioning process of the rotor-bearing system can be very extensive.

In order to identify the physical effects, derivate design guidelines for rotor-bearing-systems and detect the limitations of gas bearing technology, gas bearing – rotor interactions are studied. Currently, the focus is on time-efficient nonlinear bearing modelling for rotor dynamic simulation, as well as stability- and bifurcation analysis of the rotor.

Contact: Prof. W. Seemann, C. Baum