Oil-free bearing development for high-speed turbomachinery in distributed energy systems – dynamic and environmental evaluation

Modern distributed energy systems, which are used to provide an alternative to or an enhancement of traditional electric power systems, require small size highspeed rotor turbomachinery to be developed. The existing conventional oil-lubricated bearings reveal performance limits at high revolutions as far as stability and power loss of the bearing are concerned. Non-conventional, oil-free bearings lubricated with the machine working medium could be a remedy to this issue. This approach includes a correct design of the machine flow structure and an accurate selection of the bearing type. Chosen aspects of the theoretical and experimental investigations of oil-free bearings and supports; including magnetic, tilting pad, pressurized aerostatic and hydrostatic bearings as well as some applications of oil-free bearing technology for highspeed turbomachinery; are described in the paper.