Stability Analysis of a Spinning and Precessing Viscoelastic Rotor Model

Abstract

The present work deals with stability analysis of a spinning and precessing gyroscopic systems, where the spin axis and precession axis intersect at right angle. The nutation speed is zero, the spin and precession speeds are considered to be uniform and the precession axis is located at one end of the shaft. The properties of the shaft material correspond to a four element type linear viscoelastic model. The shaft disk system is assumed to be axially and torsionally stiff. For analysis, a simple rotor has been considered with the rigid disk placed on a massless viscoelastic shaft at specified locations from one end of the shaft. The governing parametric equations for such a rotor are derived in the simultaneously spinning and precessing frame. A stability analysis is performed considering both two- and four-degree of freedom models. The stability borderlines are computed considering spin and precession speeds as parameters. It is shown that though viscoelastic material may appear attractive for its large material damping, for gyroscopic systems it may lead to unstable vibrations.