The Wing Foil: A Novel Compliant Radial Foil Bearing Design

To meet the challenging demands for high performance, affordable compliant foil bearings (CFBs), a novel compliant support element has been developed. This recently patented, novel support element uses a multidimensional array of multiple, formed, cantilever “wing foil” tabs. The wing foil bearing has all the features required to achieve state-of-the-art performance (Gen III for radial bearings). This paper describes two radial foil bearings using the wing foil and the unique design features. Test data for a 31.75 mm diameter bearing operating in air and in steam up to 42 krpm are presented to demonstrate the performance of this bearing. It is shown to have low subsynchronous vibration and reasonable damping through rigid shaft critical speeds.