Three-D CFD Analysis of Hydrostatic Bearings

The hydrostatic bearing promises life and speed characteristics currently unachievable with rolling element bearings alone. In order to achieve the speed and life requirements of the next generation of rocket engines, turbopump manufacturers are proposing hydrostatic bearings to be used in place of, or in series with, rolling element bearings. The design of a hydrostatic bearing is dependent on accurate pressure in the bearing. The stiffness and damping of the hydrostatic bearing is very sensitive to the bearing recess pressure ratio. In the conventional approach, usually ad hoc assumptions were made in determining the bearing pressure of this approach is inherently incorrect. In the present paper, a more elaborate approach to obtain bearing pressure is used. The bearing pressure and complete flow features of the bearing are directly computed by solving the complete 3-D Navier Stokes equation. The code used in the present calculation is a modified version of REACT3D code. Several calculations have been performed for the hydrostatic bearing designed and tested at Texas A&M. Good agreement has been obtained between computed and test results. Detailed flow features in the bearing will also be described and discussed.