Dynamic analysis of short and long journal bearings in laminar and turbulent regimes, application in critical shaft stiffness determination

Abstract

• Analytically modeling turbulent forces and coefficients for short and long bearings. • Stability region identification at different Reynolds numbers. • Bifurcation (super and sub critical) analysis near stability curve. • Critical shaft stiffness calculation using nonlinear stability analysis. • Experimental verification of the proposed mathematical model. Linear and non-linear stability of a flexible rotor-bearing system supported on short and long journal bearings is studied for both laminar and turbulent operating conditions. The turbulent pressure distribution and forces are calculated analytically from the modified Reynolds equation based on two turbulent models; Constantinescu's and Ng–Pan–Elrod. Hopf bifurcation theory was utilized to estimate the local stability of periodic solutions near bifurcating operating points. The shaft stiffness was found to play an important role in bifurcating regions on the stable boundaries. It was found that for shafts supported on short journal bearings with shaft stiffness above a critical value, the dangerous subcritical region can be eliminated from a range of operating conditions with high static load. The results presented have been verified by published results in the open literature.