Numerical research of pressure depression in aerostatic thrust bearing with inherent orifice

The undesirable pressure depression in aerostatic bearing will cause the loss of aerostatic bearing load capacity. Therefore, the method of “separation of variables” (MSV) for solution of laminar boundary-layer equations is utilized to investigate the pressure depression. The influences of supply pressure, orifice diameter, film thickness and pressure ratio on the pressure depression are studied. The results manifest that pressure depression is weakened with decreasing supply pressure and film thickness and increasing orifice diameter. The increase of pressure ratio which is determined by the flow and geometry parameters will weaken the inertial effect and then results in weakening the pressure depression. What's more, when pressure ratio is larger than the critical value 0.9409, the pressure depression will disappear.