Study On The Driving Technology Of Squeeze Film Levitating Bearing

Gas squeeze film bearings with their numerous advantages in the field of precision bearings have abroad application prospects and many research papers have been published on this area at home andabroad. Gas squeeze film bearings need a driving power and an actuator that could generate high-frequency vibration with micro-amplitude, however, little research on driving technology for thispurpose has been finished. The piezoelectric ceramic actuator is an ideal gas squeeze films bearings’driver for its many advantages such as small volume, high control precision, fast response speed andlarge output force etc. The driving power of the piezoelectric ceramic actuators requires gooddynamic characteristics, but now most of the piezoelectric ceramic driving power is designed forstatic applications and its dynamic performance is poor, it affect the dynamic performance of thepiezoelectric ceramic actuators seriously and so does the performance of bearings. Therefore theresearch on gas squeeze film bearings’ driving power has important significance for the widely use ofgas squeeze bearings.To meet requirements for the large capacity and high driving frequency of the gas squeeze filmbearings’ actuator, a driving power which is suitable for driving large capacity and high frequencypiezoelectric ceramic actuator is designed. It adopt the circuit structure which uses a high-voltageintegrated operational amplifier driving paralleling multi power booster units, and it is compact andreliable. Simulation and analysis for the circuit of the power supply is finished by use of Multisimsoftware, and its result indicated that the dynamic performance of the driving power could meet therequirements of gas squeeze film bearings.The circuit schematic diagram and PCB board of the drive power were designed by applying thePROTEL software, and then the PCB board was manufactured and tested. The results of the testshowed that the driving power had the strong voltage and current drive capability, excellent dynamicproperties as well as good stability and linearity. The levitating performance of the gas squeeze filmbearing was studied by using the piezoelectric ceramic driving power. The results showed that the gassqueeze film bearing could be suspended by squeeze film stably under the exciting of the drivingpower. It was found that the levitating height had certain relationship with the voltage and frequencyof the driving signal. The levitating height increased with the increasing of the driving signal’s voltageand it reached a maximum value at the resonance point. It was proved that the designed driving powerhad a good performance and satisfied the desired requirements both from the theoretical analysis andexperimental research.