Fluid Bearing
Fluid bearings are bearings which support the bearing's loads solely on a thin layer of liquid or gas.
They can be broadly classified into two types: fluid dynamic bearings and hydrostatic bearings. Hydrostatic bearings are externally pressurized fluid bearings, where the fluid is usually oil, water or air, and the pressurization is done by a pump. Hydrodynamic bearings rely on the high speed of the journal (the part of the shaft resting on the fluid) to pressurize the fluid in a wedge between the faces.
Fluid bearings are frequently used in high load, high speed or high precision applications where ordinary ball bearings would have short life or cause high noise and vibration. They are also used increasingly to reduce cost. For example, hard disk drive motor fluid bearings are both quieter and cheaper than the ball bearings they replace.
Read more about Fluid Bearing: Operation, Characteristics and Principles of Operation
Famous quotes containing the words fluid and/or bearing:
“Eye, gazelle, delicate wanderer,
Drinker of horizon’s fluid line;
Ear that suspends on a chord
The spirit drinking timelessness;
Touch, love, all senses;”
—Stephen Spender (1909–1995)
“At sundown, leaving the river road awhile for shortness, we went by way of Enfield, where we stopped for the night. This, like most of the localities bearing names on this road, was a place to name which, in the midst of the unnamed and unincorporated wilderness, was to make a distinction without a difference, it seemed to me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)