In view of the defects such as poor wearresistance and low bearing capacity of singlelayer protuberant foil hydrodynamic thrust gas bearings in the experiment,doublelayer and threelayer protuberant foil support structures were designed.The three numerical models of singlelayer,doublelayer and threelayer protuberant foil support structures were established by ANSYS Workbench finite element software.By using the finite difference method and the NewtonRaphson iteration method,the pressure distribution of the gas film under the same bearing size was obtained through the MATLAB programming.By applying the gas film pressure to the flat foil surfaces of the three support structures,the elastic deformation of different support structures was obtained by numerical solution.The results show that the deformation of the flat foil is larger than that of the protuberant foil,therefore,the deformation of the flat foil should not be ignored in the analysis.In the deformation of the multilayer protuberant foil,the closer the bubbling foil is to the bearing clearance,the greater the deformation of the bubbling foil and the support.For multilayer protuberant foil support structures,the supporting role of the protuberant foil can be improved by increasing the thickness of the flat foil.The support structure with threelayer protuberant foils has a good elastic distribution,it should be preferably used in the design of protuberant foil hydrodynamic thrust bearings.