Experimental Research on Foil Vibrations in a Gas Foil Bearing Carried Out Using an Ultra-High-Speed Camera

The foil bearing consists of parts made of very thin, properly shaped foils. Usually, it is very difficult or even impossible to measure the vibrations of these elements during the bearing operation using traditional sensors. Therefore, the authors of this article have proposed an entirely new approach to this issue. This article discusses the analysis of vibrations of the structural supporting layer of a gas foil bearing at high rotational speeds. Instead of using a traditional method to measure the bearing journal movement, the measurement was performed using an ultra-high-speed digital camera. This type of measurement was used for the first time to analyse foil bearing displacement. It turned out that doing so can give a far more vibrant picture of what is happening in gas foil bearings during their operation. The article includes an analysis of foil vibrations. This phenomenon has already been analysed numerically, and this is the first time it has been analysed experimentally. The registered motion of the foils can be compared with the results obtained from numerical models, thus allowing their further development. One such comparison is shown in this article.