A Study of Transient Response of Flexible Rotors in High Speed Turbomachinery

Abstract

In many applications the design operating range of the turbomachinery may be well above the rotor first critical speed which leads to the problem of insuring that the turbomachinery performs with a stable, low-level amplitude of vibration. Under certain conditions of high speed and loading the rotor system can start orbiting in its bearing at a rate which is less than the rotor angular speed, and this phenomena is commonly known as whirling or whipping action. This whipping action may produce additional undesirable dynamic loads on the overall flexible assembly and eventually destroy the rotor. Some of this action is also transient in nature. Whirling is a self-exited vibration caused mainly by the fluid bearings and by the internal friction damping of the rotor. To understand this occurrence, a general dynamic mathematical model was derived considering also the complete viscous characteristic of hydrodynamic journal bearings. The general equations of motions of the system are obtained from Lagrange’s equation of motion. The system kinetic, potential, and dissipation functions are determined based on the generalized coordinates of the system. The journal displacements are related to the overall dynamics of the rotor using deformable bearings. The loads acting at the journals of the shaft are integrated from the fluid film pressure distribution in the journal bearings using mobility method. A unique mathematical model is formulated and solved. This model includes the elastic and inertial properties of the flexible rotor, the elastic, damping and inertial properties of supports and the hydrodynamic characteristics of the journal bearings. The equations of motions result in a system of nonlinear second order differential equations which are solved by using finite difference method. The solution of the equations of motions is used to plot maps of motion of journal centers. A computer program was implemented to aid in the solution of the system of equations and to verify analytical model. The computer program used test data available in literature and the results were compared to be very good. The analytical model and results obtained in this study can be of great help to designers of high speed turbomachinery.