A novel modeling method to investigate the performance of aerostatic spindle considering the fluid-structure interaction

The performances of aerostatic spindle are highly affected by the fluid-structure interaction (FSI) between air film and solid structure. This paper proposes a novel modeling method to investigate the FSI of aerostatic spindle system, by which the structure deformation included by air film force can be acquired. Furthermore, a virtual weight loading method is proposed to estimate the stiffness of spindle with consideration of structure deformation and gravitational eccentricity. The reliability of the proposed method is verified by experiments. Based on the proposed FSI model, the influences of air film geometrical parameters and structure dimension on the performance of aerostatic spindle are further investigated and discussed to guide the design of air spindle.