Nonlinear Vibration Analysis of a Flexible Rotor Supported by a Journal Bearing Considering Journal Angular Motion

The effect of bearing length to diameter (L/D) ratio and large disk position on nonlinear vibration (limit cycle and bifurcation type) of a flexible rotor-bearing system is investigated. The rotor consists of a shaft modeled by 1-D finite elements (FE), two small disks and a large disk. It is supported by a self-aligning ball bearing and an axial-groove journal bearing with L/D ratio of 0.4 and 0.6. Two large disk positions: 340 and 575 mm measured from the ball bearing are investigated. The journal angular motion, which is essential for the highly flexible rotor but typically not considered in the previous nonlinear vibration literature; is considered in nonlinear bearing force calculation. The degrees of freedom (DOF) of the rotor-bearing system are reduced to those of the node that the nonlinear journal bearing force and moment act on by real mode component mode synthesis (CMS) that retains only the 1st forward and backward modes. Shooting method and Floquet multiplier analysis are applied to the reduced rotor-bearing system to obtain limit cycles and their stability of each bearing L/D ratio and large disk position case. Numerical results indicate that supercritical Hopf bifurcation only occurs in the case of L/D = 0.4 and large disk position 575 mm, otherwise subcritical occurs. However, if the typical bearing model that does not consider journal angular motion is used, the bifurcation type for the case of L/D = 0.6 with large disk position 575 mm will change to supercritical. Lastly, the experiments with the same L/D ratio and large disk position investigated in the calculation are performed as a validation. The experimental result of each case shows the same bifurcation type as the calculation result using the bearing model that considers the journal angular motion.