No abstract

No abstract

Floating ring bearings are used to support and guide rotors in several high-speed rotating machinery applications. They are usually credited for lower heat generation and higher vibration suppressing ability. Similar to conventional hydrodynamic bearings, floating ring bearings may exhibit unstable behaviour above a certain stability critical speed. Linear stability analysis is usually applied to predict the stability threshold speed. Non-linear stability analysis, however, is needed to predict the presence and the size of stable limit cycles above the stability threshold speed or unstable limit cycles below the stability critical speed. The prediction of limit cycles is an important step in bearing stability analysis. In this article, a non-linear dynamic model is derived and used to investigate the stability of a perfectly balanced symmetric rigid rotor supported by two identical floating ring bearings near the critical stability boundaries. The fluid film hydrodynamic reactions of the floating ring bearings are modelled by applying the short bearing theory and the half Sommerfeld solution. Hopf bifurcation theory is then utilized to determine the existence and the approximate size of stable and unstable limit cycles in the neighbourhood of the stability critical speed depending on the bearing design parameters. Numerical integration of the non-linear equations of motion is then carried out in order to compare the trajectories obtained by numerical integration to those obtained analytically using Hopf bifurcation analysis. Stability boundary curves for typical bearing design parameters have been decomposed into boundaries with supercritical stable limit cycles and boundaries with subcritical unstable limit cycles. The shape and size of the limit cycles for selected bearing parameters are presented using both analytical and numerical approaches. This article shows that floating ring stability boundaries may exhibit either stable supercritical limit cycles or unstable subcritical limit cycles predictable by Hopf bifurcation.

Rotor vibration control is crucial for the reliability of rotating machines. This article applies active vibration control to reduce the vibration of a rotor bearing system using flexible piezoelectric patches as actuators mounted on the shaft external surface. The patches reduce the vibration due to unbalance forces by generating bending moments to counteract rotor deformation. An active vibration control system is designed based on a full-state linear quadratic regulator controller. Since proximity probes are used to measure the lateral vibrations of the rotor at few shaft positions, an observer is designed to estimate the unmeasured vibrations. The weighting matrices required by the linear quadratic regulator controller are selected by trial and error so that the displacement amplitudes are reduced to a minimum and the actuation voltages remain within the limitations defined by the manufacturer of the used patches. Simulated responses demonstrate the effectiveness of the designed controller in attenuating the lateral vibration of the rotor bearing system when using two actuating voltages. The vibration response is reduced for the steady-state condition and during run-up particularly at the first critical speed.

Floating ring bearings have been widely used, over the last decades, in rotors of automotive turbochargers because of their improved damping behavior and their good emergency-operating capabilities. They also offer a cost-effective design and have good assembly properties. Nevertheless, rotors with floating ring bearings show vibration effects of nonlinear nature induced by self-excited oscillations originating from the bearing oil films (oil whirl/whip phenomena) and may exhibit various nonlinear vibration effects which may cause damage to the rotor. In order to investigate these dynamic phenomena, this paper has developed a nonlinear model of a perfectly balanced rigid rotor supported by two identical floating ring bearings with consideration of their vibration behavior mainly governed by fluid dynamics. The dimensionless hydrodynamic forces of floating ring bearings have been derived based on the short bearing theory and the half Sommerfeld solution. Using the numerical continuation approach, different bifurcations are detected when a control parameter, the journal speed, is varied. Depending on the system’s physical parameters, the rotor can show stable or unstable limit cycles which themselves may collapse beyond a certain rotor speed to exhibit a fold bifurcation. Bifurcation analysis is performed to investigate the occurring instabilities and nonlinear phenomena. Such results explain the instabilities characteristics of the floating ring bearing in high-speed applications. It has also been found that the selection of the bearing modulus plays an important role in the characterization of the rotor stability threshold speed and bifurcation sequences. An understanding of the system’s nonlinear behavior serves as the basis for new and rational criteria for the design and the safe operation of rotating machines.