Control of an oil film thickness in a hydrostatic journal bearing under different dynamic conditions

Abstract

In order to meet the requirements of supporting heavy loads, high stiffness, and precise movement, the hydrostatic journal bearings are getting popularity from day to day. The efficiency of hydrostatic bearing for supporting the external load, depends upon the external source of pressure, which is responsible for supplying fluid at a certain pressure. Normally pump is used to supply fluid at a certain pressure, which has poor performance and low efficiency. This paper presents servo valve with a feedback control algorithm to achieve uniform oil thickness for positioning of a shaft in a hydrostatic journal bearing. To check the effectiveness of a proposed strategy, a number of experiments have been done in Matlab/Simulink using different conditions of external load and viscosity. It is found that proposed strategy not only has good results under the different value of viscosity but also has a linear relationship between external load and change in oil film thickness under a wide range of external load.