Performance Evaluation of Magnetohydrodynamic Bearing

The present paper introduces a concept of hydrodynamic-permanent-magnetic hybrid bearing. The hybrid bearing uses repulsive force between permanent magnets and fluid force developed due to relative speed in a single assembly arrangement. Repulsive type passive magnetic levitation has advantage of minimum starting torque. Hydrodynamic lubrication mechanism has advantage of low friction at medium and high speed. This hybridization will be an attractive choice in commercial applications for its low cost, structural-simplicity and no metal-to-metal contact. An experimental setup is designed and developed to investigate the performance characteristics of proposed concept of hybrid bearing. Minimum film thickness, oil flow rate, and temperature rise are recorded at various speed- and load- conditions. Results are plotted to demonstrate the behavior of hybrid bearing arrangement.