Gas Foil Journal Bearing Power Loss at High Ambient Pressure

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Exploration Initiative requires the reliable availability of electrical power, on the order of hundreds of kilowatts, for operating spacecraft electric ion engines, on-board instruments, and communications. Foil gas bearing performance in Helium-Xenon (He-Xe) gas mixtures at high ambient pressures is a critical issue in the design of these power conversion systems. The work describe herein is a combined experimental and analytic approach to predicting bearing power loss at these conditions. A high pressure test chamber is used to test generation III foil journal bearings up to 47 atmospheres (∼700 psig). Data is then calibrated to classic Taylor-Couette flow to determine an appropriate power loss model for these bearings.