Hydrostatic lubrication with cryogenic fluids

The paper presents a computational procedure that can be useful in assessing the main performance parameters (load, flow rate, attitude angle) of hydrostatic journal bearings, without resorting to full numerical computing. The procedure is based on the ‘lumped resistance method’, which has been extended to take into account turbulence and inertia effects. Comparison with available experimental data shows a pretty reasonable agreement, in spite of the approximations that have been introduced. The procedure has been used to design a number of bearings that have been tested in order to study the possible replacement of rolling bearings in cryogenic turbopumps.