LAUSR

Abstract This paper presents a three-dimensional model of gas foil bearings with consideration of axial variation of the structural deflection. The top and bump foils are modeled with shell elements; hence, membrane, bending and shear effects are involved. The penalty method and node-to-segment contact scheme are used for contact modeling. To avoid numerical difficulties caused by discontinuity, the Coulomb law is modified by a regularization technique. Due to the nonlinear behavior of friction, the incremental iterative method is adopted for solution. The effect of misalignment on the static performance of the first and second generation foil bearings is studied. The results show that misalignment decreases the bearing load capacity and the second generation foil bearings exhibit better performance when misalignment occurs.