Theoretical and Experimental Analysis of an Externally Pressurized Porus Gas Thrust Bearings

This paper presents a fast modified three-dimensional flow model deduced from the Darcy equation and the modified Reynolds equation. The finite element method is used to discretize both equations so that only one nonlinear final set of equations is to be solved for finding the pressures in the gas film and porous matrix instead of two nonlinear sets of equations in the literature. In general, the time required by the present analysis on VAX 3100 is only about 30% of the time required by the classical three-dimensional flow model. For a circular porous thrust pad, the results from the present model agree well with the experimental result. It may also be observed that the analytical analysis and the one-directional flow model are not precise for the large values of R/H and small value of the film thickness h.