Modular test rig for a rotor supported by gas foil bearings

Abstract Foil bearings for high speed turbomachinery are and have been studied in terms of load capacity and lift‐off speed, stability, thermal behaviour and manufacturing. This paper focuses on a modular rotor‐bearing test rig, with which design changes can easily be experimentally investigated. An exemplary design change is undertaken and its effects are studied. Furthermore, a simple procedure is introduced, with which rigid body modes of the rotor can be extracted from phase information derived from experimentally obtained time series data.