Multi-Year ONR Grants to Develop Foil Bearings for Aero Propulsion Engines
Dr. Daejong Kim has been researching the foil bearings over the last two decades and has made substantial progress on design, analysis, and manufacturing capability of foil bearings for various industrial and defense applications.
Foil bearings are oil-free bearing technology without oil lubrication system. Dr. Kim began his foil bearing research in 2006, demystifying the principle of foil bearings through development of sophisticated analyses and simulation software, and test validation using custom-designed test equipment.
Energy efficiency and renewable energy became important for fight against the climate change, the foil bearing research is expected to gain more interest in; compact oil-free air compressors for automotive fuel cells, super-critical CO2 closed loop Brayton cycles (with heat sources from Nuclear, solar thermal, bio mass, etc), Organic Rankine Cycle turbo generators using low temperature thermal energy and waste heat (manufacturing plants, geothermal, biomass, etc.), refrigerant turbo compressors for industrial HVAC and heat pumps, cryogenic turbo expanders for liquefaction of hydrogen and natural gases, etc. Foil bearings are also recognized as one of the essential components for energy management systems (power generation, environmental control) of spacecraft for future inter-planetary travel.
Dr. Kim's research made a unique contribution on foil bearing by developing hybrid foil bearings and multi-pad foil bearings reaching max. speed over DN~3.5million, along with sophisticated simulation and design software, and over 70 journal and conference publications on the foil bearings, 4 US patents, raising over $4.5M of externally funded research on foil bearing since he joined UTA in 2008.
