Numerical and experimental analysis on the whirl orbit with inner loop in cracked rotor system

Abstract

Cracks in rotor systems are generated because of internal as well as external heavy loading conditions. The external loading conditions could be attributed to thermal gradients (such as in turbomachinery) or other environmental conditions that result in cracks developments. The internal loading conditions can be attributed to cyclic fatigue loading during continuous and recurrent shaft's running which is the most common cause for cracks propagation. The presence of cracks in rotor systems induces nonlinearities into the system which affects its whirl response. Many published literature on cracked rotors have indicated that when the rotational speed is at sub-critical resonance of order 1/n (1/2, 1/3,1/4, etc.…) of the critical rotational speed, the fundamental whirl orbit takes patterns including inner loop/loops of order (n-1) or outer loop/loops of order (n+1) depending on the critical whirling direction. The present study investigates the strong impact of the magnitude of unbalance force on whirling pattern with inner loop in a cracked rotor. Numerical analysis is carried out on the mathematical model of the considered cracked rotor. The unbalance force magnitude is observed to be the main factor affecting the inner loop pattern in the whirl orbit rather than the ½ of the critical resonance speed. Accordingly, the appearance of inner loop in shaft's whirl orbit due to crack propagation in the rotor system is found here to be present before and after passing through resonance speed. This inner loop whirl orbit pattern is not restricted to be associated with ½ of the critical rotational speed as believed in plenty of literature. This kind of whirling is observed to be strongly depending on the unbalance force magnitude rather than the subcritical resonance speed. The experimental results also validate the numerical simulation findings. Therefore, the whirl orbits of the cracked rotor can be categorized into pre-resonance whirl orbit (Pr-WO), resonance whirl orbit (R-WO) and post-resonance whirl orbit (Po-WO) based on the magnitude of the unbalance force. The resultant numerical and experimental findings on the whirl orbit with inner loop can provide a robust insight into the cracked rotor whirl behavior.