Optimization of Hydrogen Lubricated Herringbone Groove Gas Bearings

Gas bearings are widely used in large high-speed rotating machineries due to their advantages of low power consumption, independence of sophisticated lubrication systems and high operational accuracy. This study focuses on the modeling of the hydrogen (H2) lubricated herringbone groove bearings, which are designed to support the future high-speed H2 centrifugal compressor for the H2 pipeline transportation, and therefore directly use H2 for lubrication to guarantee the tightness, purity and safety of the H2 transport system. Important bearing parameters including the groove number, depth and other geometric parameters are optimized to improve the bearing load-carrying capacity. The cross-shaped groove demonstrates superior performance compared with the traditional sliding gas bearings under ultra-high speed and low gas supply pressure. CFD simulations in this study show that the herringbone groove bearing based on H2 lubrication can achieve a satisfactory load-carrying capacity with optimized geometries. The current research is an important step towards designing a high-speed H2 centrifugal compressor prototype.