Improved Vehicle Positioning and Navigation Using Low-Cost Sensors

There is a great need of gas turbine engines and auxiliary power units providing improved performance, lower cost, better maintainability, and higher reliability. Foil air bearings do provide a promising choice in meeting these goals. Foil air bearingsare successfully being used in air cycle machines of aircraft environmental control systems. They have shown excellent reliability, maintainability and reduced cost for these machines. Application of foil bearings for gas turbine engines require furtherresearch and development. A new generation of foil bearings is proposed, which is suitable for gas turbine engines.In Phase I, feasibility of the proposed approach has been shown by testing the new generation of foil bearings. In Phase II, a design method will be developed using a multiple regression method. A super-critical rotor dynamics simulator supported on foilbearings will be built and tested. Foil bearings will be installed in the Ingersoll-Rand PowerWorks gas turbine and tested under actual high temperature environmental conditions. In Phase III, foil bearings will be tested in Williams Internationalengines WR-24-8 and EJ-22. The Allison JETEC engine will be modified to incorporate a foil bearing on the hot end and tested. A report will be written summarizing the results.