Two High-Temperature Foil Journal Bearings

An enlarged, high-temperature -compliant foil bearing has been built and tested to demonstrate the feasibility of such bearings for use in aircraft gas turbine engines. At 150 mm in diameter, this is the largest foil bearing known to date. This bearing is a scaled-up version of a patented 100-mm-diameter foil bearing, augmented by coating the foil with a proprietary high-temperature material. In a companion development, a foil bearing as described above has been combined with a 150-mm-diameter active magnetic bearing to make a hybrid foil magnetic bearing.