Experimental Study of Stabilisation of Small Size Journal Bearing With Oil Supply Groove by Using Starved Lubrication and Bearing Orientation Angle Change

Journal bearings are widely used for supporting high speed rotating machinery such as turbine, compressor and HDD spindle etc, because of their high load carrying capacity, stability and durability. Recently, the engineering trend is oriented to higher speed and smaller sizes of rotating machinery, and then it is important to enhance stabilities for the journal bearings. Tilting pad journal bearing is generally used for high-speed rotating machineries because of their advantages of stabilization. However, there are some problems using for compact size rotating machineries for their high manufacturing cost and complicated structure. Therefore, it is necessary to enhance the stability of more simple bearings compared with tilting pad bearing in order to use for small size rotating machinery. This paper describes the stabilization method of journal bearing based on the combination mechanism with starved lubrication and orientation angle change. From the results of stability experimental study of journal bearings, it is clarified that the stabilization of bearings is improved drastically by using above techniques.