Aerostatic porous annular thrust bearings as seals

Externally pressurized porous thrust bearings can be used for simultaneous sealing and bearing functions. Performance characterizing metrics of aerostatic seals include load capacity, stiffness, air consumption and leakage. Gas flow in porous aerostatic bearings and seals can be modeled using modified Reynolds equation, where a porous feeding term is included. In this paper, a non-dimensional analytical solution for the pressure distribution is proposed for annular thrust seals with assumption of one-dimensional restrictor flow. It is shown, that the analytic solution is equivalent to a numerical solution with two-dimensional restrictor flow on the most significant performance metrics under static conditions. The theoretical results are validated by experiments with two 64 mm diameter aerostatic graphite seals, demonstrating the accuracy of the proposed models.