Search

This paper describes the application of geometry optimization method proposed by Hashimoto to the design of air lubricated thrust bearings used for HDD spindle motors. The optimization is carried out to maximize the dynamic stiffness of air films because the low stiffness is a serious problem of thrust air bearings in the actual application to HDD spindle motor. The optimized dynamic stiffnesses are obtained by changing the allowable film thickness, which is corresponding to the tolerance of bearings. The results obtained show that the optimized thrust air bearings have the comparable stiffness to the oil lubricated thrust bearings and it is verified theoretically that this type of thrust air bearing can be used for HDD spindle motors.

Grooved thrust air bearings are widely used to support high-speed, low-loaded shafts in many rotating systems because of their low friction, noiseless operation, and simple structure. Several types of groove geometries, such as straight line, spiral, and herringbone, are commonly used in actual applications. Among these, the spiral groove is mainly used. However, as far as the authors know, there is no theoretical evidence that the spiral groove is the most optimized groove geometry in all possible groove geometries. This paper describes the optimum design for the groove geometry of thrust air bearings according to various objective functions such as air film thickness, bearing torque, dynamic stiffness of air film, and other similar combinations. In an optimum design, groove geometries are expressed by the third degree of spline function, and sequential quadratic programming is used as the optimization method. It is understood that the groove geometry for optimizing air film thickness or friction torque takes the basic form of spiral groove geometry. The geometry design for optimizing the dynamic stiffness is the modified spiral groove. Numerical results are compared with the measured data, and good agreements can be seen between them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hydrodynamic gas film bearings are widely used for very-high-speed, lightly loaded rotating machinery. In the design of hydrodynamic gas film bearings, it is of cardinal importance to enhance the stiffness of gas films to minimize vibration due to external excitations. Among various types of hydrodynamic gas film thrust bearings, grooved bearings have an advantage of high stiffness and load-carrying capacity, but the stiffness of the bearings strongly depends on groove geometry. Therefore, when the groove geometry is suitably designed, it is expected to considerably improve the stability characteristics of the bearings. However, conventional bearing geometries are based on a fixed logarithmic spiral curve, and there is no literature on how to effectively change the groove geometry to drastically improve the bearing characteristics. In this paper, the entirely new optimum design methodology, in which the groove geometry can be flexibly changed by using the spline function, is presented to maximize the stiffness of gas films for grooved thrust bearings. The effectiveness of the methodology is experimentally verified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]