Flexure Pivot^TM Gas Bearings

The application of gas bearings provide maintenance free and oil free clean operating environment.. A significantly low power consumption due to low viscosity of lubricant gas allows the machines to operate at ultra high speeds on the gas bearings.  Our Flexure Pivot™ high-speed gas bearings are successfully tested and proven technology for gas bearing applications. The bearings are designed and optimized to provide required damping and stiffness characteristics for individual applications. The bearing design incorporates flexible pivots to obtain negligible cross coupling and a soft leaf spring provision to accommodate dust particle and shaft growth during operation. The bearing pad surfaces are coated with high wear resistant and extremely low friction materials to enhance the start/stop endurance and reduce the start up torque requirement. Our Flexure Pivot tilt pad gas bearings are typically used up to the unit load of 10 psi for the hydrodynamic application and can operate at shaft surface speeds of 950 ft/sec.

Key Benefits of Flexure Pivot^TM Gas Bearings

• Minimizes the manufacturing tolerance stack-up. The integral, one-piece pad-pivot-retainer design eliminates most of the manufacturing tolerance stack-up. This feature is a critical design parameter, which has a direct impact on the rotor's stability, critical speed, and synchronous response characteristics.
• Simple one-piece design. Also available in split configuration, which is not easy with conventional foil bearings, it offers the performance of a tilt pad bearing and the simplicity of a sleeve bearing. Installation is easy. The pads never need any adjustment.
• Inherently stable bearing design. Like conventional tilt pad bearings, FLEXURE PIVOT bearings are inherently stable, ensuring optimal rotordynamic characteristics. The rotational stiffness of the pivot is selected such that the cross-coupled stiffness coefficients are negligible.
• Eliminates pad flutter. The rotational stiffness of the pivots increases the pad natural frequency and eliminates pad flutter, often encountered on the unloaded pads in conventional standard tilt pad bearings.
• Accommodates shaft growth and impurities. The optimized integral pad-pivot-leaf spring soft support provision on the unloaded pads of FLEXURE PIVOT gas bearings accommodates dust particles and shaft growth due to thermal expansion and centrifugal force and can provide additional damping as a gas damper.
• Available hybrid FLEXURE PIVOT^TM design. Hybrid FLEXURE PIVOT bearing designs for higher bearing load application are also available and can be achieved by incorporating small holes through the flexible pivot. This novel bearing not only supports much higher bearing loads over the foil bearings but also eliminate instabilities associated with the hybrid sleeve journal bearings.

Download Brochure: Flexure Pivot Tilt Pad Bearings
Download Inquiry Sheet: Gas Bearing Application Inquiry Sheet

Please complete our Bearing Application Inquiry Sheet if you would like us to evaluate your application. The completed inquiries can be sent to sales@kmcbearings.com