High Durability, Light Weight Bearings for Small Turbine Engines

This proposed effort leverages MiTis DoD and commercial projects that directly address high performance, long life and low-cost, compliant foil bearing technologies for small gas turbine engines.The overall objective of this effort is to demonstrate the feasibility of developing compliant foil bearings that are suitable to high-speed, oil-free and gas turbine engines in the 200 lb thrust/200 SHP or less.To achieve this overall objective MiTi will investigate different low cost bearing configurations that increase load carrying performance and temperature capability so that more compact bearings may be used in these space constrained engines.The effort will build upon MiTi's innovative patented high temperature and high load capacity foil bearings, seals and will be scaled to sizes suitable for small, highs speed turbine engines.Design requirements will be established, tradeoff studies will be completed and a candidate configuration selected for further evaluation in Phase II.