Effect of Manufacturing Errors on Static Characteristics of Externally Pressurized Spherical Air Bearings

Externally pressurized spherical air bearings are the key component of the three-axis air bearing table, and the manufacturing errors of the bearing affects the performance of the air bearing table. However, the manufacturing errors are unavoidable, and the pursuit to enhance the manufacturing accuracy will increase the cost greatly. In order to provide some theoretical guideline for the tolerance choice in the design of the externally pressurized spherical air bearings with inherent compensation, the effects of several manufacturing errors on the static characteristics of the air bearing are studied. Due to the complex geometry of the computational domain, an unstructured meshing technology is used for mesh generation. A finite-volume method is adopted to discretize the three-dimensional steady-state compressible Navier-Stokes equations. A modified SIMPLE algorithm which is suitable for compressible flows is applied to solve the discretized governing equations. The effects of the dimension error and the roundness error of the ball head and the ball socket on the static characteristics are investigated. The investigation result shows that the positive dimension error and the oblate spheroid-type roundness error of the ball head as well as the negative dimension error and the prolate spheroid-type roundness error of the ball socket can improve the bearing capacity and static stiffness of the air bearings by reducing the mass flow. The calculation method proposed in this paper fits well for the general principle, which can be extended to the characteristics analysis of other air bearings.