Hydrostatic bearings working at high rotational speeds are usually designed as hybrid bearings. They benefit of a load carrying capacity at low or zero speed and of a reduced torque at high working regimes. Therefore they are provided with pockets or recesses fed via hydraulic restrictors. Modeling the flow in these pockets and its coupling with thin film in the bearing is not a straightforward task. Comparisons with experimental data have shown that the capacity of correctly predicting the bearing characteristics (mainly the dynamic coefficients) is influenced by the accurate modeling of the pressure pattern in the pockets. The present work presents typical recess pressure patterns and shows the way they can influence on the bearing characteristics.
