Stability-Optimized Clearance Configuration of Fluid-Film Bearings

The whirl instability occurs at higher rotating speeds for a full circular fluid-film journal bearing, and many types of clearance configuration have been proposed to solve this instability problem. A clearance configuration of fluid-film journal bearings is optimized in a sense of enhancing the stability of the full circular bearing at high rotational speeds. A performance index is chosen as the sum of the squared whirl-frequency ratios over a wide range of eccentricity ratios, and a Fourier series is used to represent an arbitrary clearance configuration of fluid-film bearings. An optimization problem is then formulated to find the Fourier coefficients to minimize the index. The designed bearing has a clearance configuration similar to that of an offset two-lobe bearing for smaller length-to-diameter ratios. It is shown that the designed bearing cannot destabilize the Jeffcott rotor at any high rotating speed for a wide range of eccentricity ratio. The load capacity of the designed bearings is nearly in the same magnitude as that of the full circular bearing for smaller length-to-diameter ratios. The whirl-frequency ratios of the designed bearing are very sensitive to truncating higher terms of the Fourier series for some eccentricity ratio. The designed bearings successfully enhance the stability of a full circular bearing and are free from the whirl instability.