Experimental Investigations into the Performance of Porous Journal Bearings

Results of experiments conducted on complete as well as partial porous journal bearings operating under steady conditions are herein presented. Performance characteristics presently determined include eccentricity ratio, coefficient of friction and attitude angle. Values of the permeability parameter ranged in experiments between 2.54×10⁻³and 4.35×10⁻².

Test results show quite good agreement with theoretical predictions of the authors. Comparison between results obtained for partial bearings, also for complete bearings with holes intensionally drilled in the region of supposedly negative pressure implies the validity of discarding the negative pressure zone as postulated by the authors in their proposed theory.