THEORETICAL-ANALYSIS OF 2 CONFIGURATIONS OF AEROSTATIC FLAT PAD BEARINGS USING POCKETED ORIFICE RESTRICTORS

Aerostatic flat pad bearings are finding increased applications in hig h-precision machine tools, high-performance measuring equipment and co ordinate measuring machines. To date, much of the development of these bearings has been of an empirical nature since there are no detailed design procedures for assisting designers to optimize their designs1,2 . In the field of aerostatic journal bearing design, comprehensive pro cedures do exist. The object of this paper is to exploit the principle s developed for the analysis of aerostatic journal bearings to the are a of flat pad bearings, which are more widely used in industrial situa tions. In this paper, similar analysis tools are developed and are use d to obtain design performance data for a number of flat pad bearing c onfigurations. These data include load, flow and stiffness parameters, all of which are fundamental to design optimization.