BEARINGS: - Bearing Is A Machine Member, Which Supports Moving Parts &

Air Bearings Next Generation Bearings
1.
INTRODUCTION
It has been a long time since the industrial revolution started in

England. We have now entered in 21st century. As the industries have gone automatic,
it is obvious that there has been tremendous advancement in the technology in every
field of machine design. Bearings are no exception to it.
BEARINGS: - Bearing is a machine member, which supports moving parts &

confines its motion.
Bearings are broadly classified as Contact & non-contact
bearings. Air bearings fall under category of non-contact bearings. Ball and roller
bearings fall in category of contact bearings.
There are several drawbacks in conventional ball & roller bearings due
to factors such as friction, noise, dust collection, power loss, need of frequent
lubrication etc.
To overcome this drawback engineers started to think about noncontact bearings. That is how air bearings came into existence. Although the air
bearings seem to be a new concept, they were invented way back in 1960s. However,
their applications were very limited due to their delicateness. They had low strength
and that is why they were incapable in most applications. However, due to vast
advancement in the technology they are now considered as a replacement to other
bearings.
Accurate, precise, easy controlled machines are the requirement of the
new industries. Quality of product is of utmost importance and hence imprecision,
low accuracy, wear &tear, dust collection, play between the parts is intolerable in
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quality manufacturing environments. In such applications air bearings are gaining
preference over conventional bearings such as roller & ball bearings.
Even though ball and roller bearings can never be replaced in all the
applications, there are many cases in which roller bearings are totally unacceptable
because of their shortcomings. Hence, in these areas air bearings can be useful to
designers.
The general form of air bearing can be understood from the figure.
Layout of General Air Bearing

One can visualize air bearings as two compressed surfaces separated
by a small air gap running in micro inches. As the load goes on increasing, the air gap
reduces in width and the effective pressure in of air increases linearly. A constant
supply of air resists the two surfaces form touching each other.
Bearings typically operate in pressures ranging from 200Mpa to
900Mpa according to the loading. The required pressurized air is obtained from
compressors. Due to use of air film, the friction is negligible, which is the main
feature of air bearings.
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2.
a)
TYPES OF AIR BEARINGS
ACCORDING TO ORIFICE STRUCTURE

The air bearings are classified in two types, according to orifice
structure. They are as follows.

i)
ORIFICE BEARINGS
In orifice bearings, the air passes through standard diameter orifices,
which are located where pressure location is most convenient. The orifice air bearings
are classified as follows,
SINGLE ORIFICE AIR BEARINGS

In this type of air bearing the pressurized air passes through
geometrically central orifice. In this type, the pressure is maximum at the hole as it
supports major share of its weight of member to be.
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MULTIPLE ORIFICE AIR BEARING
Air passes through more than one hole & hence multiple site support is
given to support the bearing.
ii)
POROUS AIR BEARINGS

These air bearings overcome all the shortcomings of above air
bearings. The porous air bearings have a honeycomb structure. Hence, the air passes
through millions of pores having diameter of few microns. As these pores are
distributed over entire bearing surface, the bearing provides support throughout the
bearing area. Hence, pressure gets distributed over entire bearing area & the chances
failure is also lessoned.
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b)
ACCORDING TO PRESENCE OF PRELOAD

Air bearings can also be classified according to the presence of reload.
i)
NON-PRELOADED BEARINGS
In this kind of air bearings, no preload is used to stabilize the bearing.
ii)
VACCUME PRELOADED AIR BEARINGS (VPL)

These bearings are incorporated with a vacuum port along with
pressure port. Simultaneous application of vacuum and pressure at different areas

stabilize the bearing.
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3.
MATERIAL USED IN AIR BEARINGS
FOR ORIFICE AIR BEARINGS

Orifice air bearings can be made from metals, alloys and alloy steel.
They are mostly made up from aluminum, duralumin. Material with high bending &
shearing strength are suitable for orifice bearings.
FOR POROUS AIR BEARINGS

Porous air bearings are made only from graphite carbon or porous
ceramic, as they require an effective in-built porous structure.
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4.
WORKING OF AIR BEARINGS
PRINCIPLE
The principle applied to all air bearings is same. Air bearings work on
the principle that, whenever a thin film of lubricant is used between two mutually
dynamic compressed surfaces, the friction is reduced. The difference between
conventional bearings and air bearings is that the supporting layer is also the fluid
film rather than contact support.
In case of air bearing, the lubricant is nothing but air. In addition, its a
well-known fact that the viscosity of air is less than hundredth of oil, which reduces
the power loss. Using the principle there are many types of air bearings are in
application today.
WORKING OF ORIFICE AIR BEARING

The orifices may be accompanied by grooves. The air passes through
orifices on bearing surface, which maintains a thin film between two surfaces.
Working of orifice air bearings
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WORKING OF POROUS AIR BEARINGS
The principle of working of air bearings is same as that of orifice air
bearings. The only difference is that no. of pores run into millions, which are
uniformly distributed over the area of bearing surface.
The benefit of porous bearings is that the air flows through the
bearings microscopic honeycomb structure. The result is a large bearing support
surface and a significantly stiffer bearing with a small air gap between air bearing and
granite or ceramic guide.
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COMPARISON OF ORIFICE AND POROUS AIR BEARINGS
From above graph, we can easily understand the difference between

the orifice and porous air bearings. The pressure distribution in both single and
multiple orifice air bearings is concentrated at orifice locations. Whereas in porous air
bearings the pressure is distributed over the entire bearing surface, providing more
stability and stiffness.
WORKING OF RADIAL AIR BEARING

These bearing can either be porous or orifice air bearings. These
bearings give radial support to the rotating member.
SPHERICAL BEARINGS
These bearings are mostly axially supporting. The bearing surface is
spherical in shape thats why the name.
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VACCUME PRELOADED BEARINGS
The fundamental principle of Vacuum Preloaded Bearings (VPL) is to
create a vacuum under the bearing surface. Simultaneously pressurized air applied to
bearing surface prevents the surfaces from making physical contact. Air bearing lands
or any inactive surfaces on same plane as the bearing face can serve as a vacuum seal.
Vacuum Preloaded Air Bearings

It is relatively easy to create a vacuum of 20 in. of mercury (-10psi),
almost two-thirds of a perfect vacuum. A large monolithic VPL (for example, 12 in. 2)
can create over 800 lb of preload force and a stiffness of well over 2 million lb/in.,
with only a single pound of payload.
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PREREQUISITES FOR AIR BEARINGS
As such, there are no prerequisites for air bearings except the air used
in it. The standard & quality of pressurized air supplied to air bearing must be
maintained to increase the life of bearing and avoid early failure of bearing. An
efficient system ensures minimum pressure loss, removal of contaminants such as
water, rust and other foreign particles.
Air should be clean i.e. free from particulate matter. Although the air bearings are
self-purging, the air supplied to it must be made to go through a series of filters so
that large sized particles i.e. particles more than 50 microns are removed.
Moisture and oil: The air should be perfectly free from moisture and oil as oil
vapour. The moisture content in air should be negligible as far as possible and the
amount of oil/oil vapour should be below 10mg/m3.
Bearings typically operate in a pressure range from 30 PSI to 120 PSI. A variety of
compressor-dryers, which are ideal for this application, are available. Air bearings
can also be operated from compressed dry nitrogen.
Following are the filters used for various purposes.
General-purpose filters are mostly used for cleaning air.
Coalescing filter is used to remove oil and liquid water.
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5.
APPLICATIONS
With increasing awareness about air bearing and increasing strength,

stability and load bearing capacity the range of application of air also increasing,
many modern and advanced tooling equipment and machines are using air bearings as
supporting and guiding members.
Right now, the air bearings may not be globally used because of cost
and the other factors. Nevertheless, as the time is passing by, the air bearings promise
to be the replacement for conventional bearings.
The applications of air bearings can be divided into two classes of
machines and instruments.
Precision machining
High load applications
Precision machining
Most of the companies, which are manufacturing goods, which require
high accuracy, precision, and which were nearly impossible to achieve with roller and
ball bearings, are employing air bearings. This is because air bearings provide high
stiffness, stability, avoid frictional losses, friction related accuracy problems and
phenomenal rigidity. Some of the precision-machining applications are as follows.
Precision machine tools
Coordinate Measuring Machines (CMM)
High precision measuring equipments
Semiconductor Wafer Processing
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Medical Machines and instruments
Optical lens Production equipment
Digital printers
Diamond Turning Machines
Material Testing Machines
Crystal Pulling
Spindles and Friction Testing
Memory Disc testing
Coating Rolls
Bearing Testers
Microscope
Focusing Of mirrors and lenses
HIGH LOADING APPLICATIONS

Radial and axial bearing in manufacturing machines and having heavy to medium
loading
Guiding Systems, Guiding Slides etc.
Heavy Load moving platforms and Flat Air bearings
Micro-turbines
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6. ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF

AIR BEARINGS
ADVANTAGES
ELIMINATION OF FRICTION RELATED PROBLEMS
Semiconductor manufacturing, high-resolution scanning and highspeed machinery are just some of the applications pushing rolling element bearings to
technical limits. One reason is friction. Friction variation has always been Achilles
heel of precision positioning systems, particularly trying to initiate or stop the motion
precisely.
This is because; plane bearing and rolling bearing to a lesser degree
have a higher static friction than dynamic friction coefficient. In other words, more
force is needed to initiate the motion than to maintain it. The stick-slip action is more
pronounced in plane way systems, though rolling element bearing suffer from it. Air
bearings are not prone to this phenomenon because they are contact less bearings and
friction due to air layers is negligible as compared to solid contact. Hence, stick-slip
action is avoided and extraordinary precision in motion and stiffness is achieved.
The difference between mst and mdy is the reason of stick-slip action,
which increases inaccuracy and less control.
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ELIMINATION OF HEAT GENERATION DUE TO FRICTION AND
THERMAL EXPANSION
Friction generates heat, which in turn causes spindles and other
components to thermally grow, compromising precision. Air bearings generate much
less amount of heat in a given application than rolling element bearings in most cases.
In fact, relative speeds should be more than 40m/sec before air bearings generate any
significant heat at normal gaps. Air bearings excel in applications requiring tight
velocity control, such as scanning and wafer inspection. Because they eliminate force
ripples from recirculating balls bearings loading and unloading.
NO REQUIREMENT OF LIFE TESTING

Advanced, high-speed, high reliability machines may run a billion
cycles annually. It is therefore impractical to do accelerated life testing on such
equipments. Engineers typically estimate bearing life based on speed, acceleration and
load. Air bearings dont require such life calculations because bearing components
dont touch each other. Air bearings will work as new after millions of cycles. The
only mode of wear in air bearings is erosion from feed itself.
SAFE FROM PARTICLE GENERATION

Lack of wear debris and no oil lubrication makes air bearings well
suited for use in clean room, medical, pharmaceutical and food processing
application. Air bearings also excel in dry, dusty and corrosive environments such as
salt or sugar factories where oil lubrication would quickly become lapping slurry. Air
bearings instead self purge and blow away light dry dust.
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HIGH STIFFNESS
Most people visualize the air bearings as a hovercraft and they
erroneously conclude that air bearings floats on air and cant be very stiff. Actually,
these bearings are many times stiffer than a ball or roller bearings.
As the load is applied on an element in motion, the air film gets
pressed creating sudden pressure in the orifice. As a result, the air pressure pushes the
element back to its position. Hence, a stabilized, pressurized air film is created which
remains uniform till the load is applied. This results in bearing stiffness of millions of
pounds per inch for small deflections.
Stiffness is linear and does not change with temperature. In contrast,
ball or roller bearings almost have no stiffness unless heavily loaded. The stiffness of
a ball bearing is not linear and varies considerably with temperature.
HIGH PRECISION
Air bearings can be made with a precision, which is 10 to 100 times
better than any other type of bearing. The motion of an air bearing follows the average
shape of rotor so that the precision of motion is better than the precision of surface of
the bearings. Since there are no balls or rollers, the motion is completely smooth.
STRAIGHTER MOTION
Rolling element bearings are directly influenced by surface finish.As
the air bearings are non-contact, the irregularities on the surface finish cant influence
the motion irregularity.
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SILENT AND SMOOTH OPERATION
Recirculating roller or balls create noise and vibration as hard elements
become loaded and unloaded and change direction in return tubes. This is especially
noticeable in resolution of scanning.
HIGHER DAMPING
Being fluid film bearings, air bearings have a squeeze film damping
effect resulting in higher dynamic stiffness and better controllability.
ELIMINATES OIL
Air bearings dont use oil lubrication, eliminating the problems
associated with oil. In dusty environments (dry machining) ways are dry and bearings
are self-cleaning, because positive air pressure pushes dust away. In contrast, oil
lubrication becomes lapping slurry.
HIGH SPEEDS
Air bearings have special excellence in high-speed applications. They
can be successfully operated at speeds up to 3, 00,000 r.p.m. with only a slight
temperature rise due to shear friction in air film.
NO DAMAGE BY SHEAR LOADS

Air bearings are also more rugged than any other type of air bearings.
Shock loads will flatten or brinnel the balls in ball bearing but air bearings has no
points of contact and can usually withstand loads 10 to 100 times greater than its load
rating.
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CORROSION RESISTANCE
Air bearings are more resistant to corrosion than any other type of
bearing. The constant flow air also serves to dry the bearing.
OPERATES IN DIRTY ENVIRONMENTS

One may think that such a high precision bearing would be sensitive to
dirt or adverse environment, but just the opposite is true. The gap between the rotor
and stator is larger in air bearing than it is in ball bearing. Therefore, air bearings can
be operated in environments, which are too dirty for ball or roller bearings to survive.
SELF-PURGING
The air bearings are capable of cleaning themselves. Because of
pressure created due to air, light, dry dust is thrown away with force cleaning the
orifices.
CAN SUSTAIN HIGH LOAD

Bearings typically operate in a pressure range from 206Mpa to
824Mpa. Thus, we can imagine the amount of load the air bearings can sustain. Even
if this is true, the air bearings are suitable only for lightweight, high-speed machines.
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DISADVANTAGES AIR BEARINGS

HIGH COST
Air bearings are relatively costlier than other bearings. The high
precision in manufacturing, costly material adds up to its cost. However, the cost is
mainly high because of monopoly of western countries over the manufacturing.
NEED OF PRESSURIZED AIR

Roller and ball bearings do not require the pressurized air. The air
bearings need pressurized air. The infrastructure, instruments are required which
increase the cost.
LOADING SHOULD NOT REACH MUCH ABOVE RATED LOADING

If the loading exceeds rated loading the bearings can compensate the
effect up to certain limit but if the load is too high above rated loading then the
surfaces will touch each other and instantly get cold welded and an accident can
occur.
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7. CONCLUSION
This article, which covers the field of air bearings, will help the
personnel in field of high precision machine designing. From the report, we can
predict that air bearings will soon replace the conventional bearings in high speed,
low loading applications because of their excellence in overcoming the friction related
problems.
As the technology is non-stationary, it is sure that the shortcomings of
air bearings will soon be removed and the air bearings will be applicable in many
more applications and fulfill the demands of machine designers. In short, the air
bearings are on their way to become Future Bearings.
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REFERENCES
1)
Types of bearings, working and parts of bearing assemblies.

Sundarajmoorthy T.V., Shanmugan N., Machine Design.
2)
Types of Air Bearings, Working of VPL s, Prerequisites of air bearings

Website newwayprecision.com
3)
Advantages of air bearing, types of air bearings

Website spaceelectronics.com
4)
Working of orifice and porous air bearing, materials used in air bearings
Website starretmaterial.com
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2)
Working Advantages And statistics of bearings.

Devitt Drew, Founder Chief Technology Officer, New way Precision Inc.
Machine Design May 8, 2004, Machine Design, August 1, 2005.
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ABSTRACT
This report has been prepared to assist engineers and designers in the
field of machine design, especially the precision machines with high speed and low
loading. The information has been compiled on the reports of machine design
magazines and the websites of leading companies that are manufacturing the various
types air bearings. This report represents the current trend in the bearing and guiding
assemblies.
Contents on the types & working of various air bearings are given.
Principle of air bearings, their superiority over conventional bearings is discussed.
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CONTENTS
Sr. No.
Topics
Page No.
ABSTRACT
1. INTRODUCTION
01
2. TYPES OF AIR BEARING
03
3. MATERIAL USED IN AIR BEARING
06
4. WORKING OF AIR BEARING
07
5. APPLICATIONS
12
6. ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES

OF AIR BEARINGS
14
7. CONCLUSION
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REFERENCES
21
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Air Bearings Next Generation Bearings

It has been a long time since the industrial revolution started in