A PROVEN NON CONTACT SOLUTION

EASIER TO INSTALL
Fluid film bearings must come with a whole host of supporting equipment, including seals, pumps, filtration systems to remove particulates from the fluid medium, and monitoring equipment to look for chips or temperature exceedances. Porous media air bearings run off of standard Clean Dry Air (CDA), and come with a plug and play option for filtering, drying and regulating the air supply. Additionally, because a porous media bearing’s load capacity is a simple algebraic relationship between flow volume and density, bearings can run off process gasses with nothing more than an adjustment to flow rate.
TRANSPARENT OPERATION
Fluid film bearings are typically designed for a specific application, using the OEM’s in-house engineering staff to design to your specification, and then providing their own recommended lubricants based on internal criteria. While this is sound engineering practice, it binds you to your OEM, requiring their input for any changes to your process or mounting system. In terms of performance, fluid film bearings make use of a complicated dynamic system wherein fluid itself forms converging/diverging wedges of Sweet
Air bearing behavior can be modeled to the first order by spring-mass-damper equations, while higher order, closed form modeling has already been performed and validated by our industry partners, which we happily make available for your use. This allows you to in house much of the analysis once you’re comfortable with the dynamics and behavior of porous media bearing systems.
SELF STABILIZING BY DESIGN
Like much more complicated fluid film bearings, New Way Air Bearings are self-stabilizing owing to the squeeze film effect, producing a positive correlation between stiffness and damping. For machine operation, this means that a rotating shaft suspended on air bearings naturally finds its center of rotation, making them ideal for turbomachinery and shaft balancing operations.
SAFER AND SIMPLER OPERATE
Fluid film bearings must be diligently inspected for particulates and chips within the coolant, and if your application is particularly high speed, chilling the oil to further remove heat from the system is often recommended.
Porous media bearings are self-cleaning thanks to the positive pressure environment within the air gap, and can be produced to operate in high pressure environments with no changes to the airflow, or risk of degradation to the bearing itself.