Design and Test of a Tilting Pad Bearing for a High Speed Turbocharger

It is well known that the standard bearing for high speed turbochargers is a floating ring design. This design typically results in a limit cycle instability with larger than desired overall vibration response. The desire would be to have a small synchronous vibration that would allow the bearing to have less side leakage and higher performance. This paper will introduce a newly developed concept for a tilting segment bearing to replace the current stock floating ring bearing. Analysis of this new bearing shows great promise of improved stability. The result of the initial testing for this new design is presented in this paper.