Experimental Studies on Flexure Pivot Tilting Pad Gas Bearings With Pad Radial Compliance

This paper presents experimental studies on imbalance responses of a rotor supported by two flexure pivot tilting pad gas bearings with radial compliance. The radial compliance was aimed to accommodate large rotor centrifugal growth inherent with high speed operation. Frequency-dependent rotordynamic force coefficients calculated from developed software were used to predict critical speeds and onset speed of instability and compared with experimental results. Two results show very good agreement.