The description of a beam element by only the displacement of its centerline leads to some difficulties in the representation of the torsion and shear effects. For instance such a representation does not capture the rotation of the beam as a rigid body about its own axis. This problem was circumvented in the literature by using a local coordinate system in the incremental finite element method or by using the multibody floating frame of reference formulation. The use of such a local element coordinate system leads to a highly nonlinear expression for the inertia forces as the result of the large element rotation. In this investigation, an absolute nodal coordinate formulation is presented for the large rotation and deformation analysis of three dimensional beam elements. This formulation leads to a constant mass matrix, and as a result, the vectors of the centrifugal and Coriolis forces are identically equal to zero. The formulation presented in this paper takes into account the effect of rotary inertia, torsion and shear, and ensures continuity of the slopes as well as the rotation of the beam cross section at the nodal points. Using the proposed formulation curved beams can be systematically modeled.

This part of these two companion papers demonstrates the computer implementation of the absolute nodal coordinate formulation for three-dimensional beam elements. Two beam elements that relax the assumptions of Euler-Bernoulli and Timoshenko beam theories are developed. These two elements take into account the effect of rotary inertia, shear deformation and torsion, and yet they lead to a constant mass matrix. As a consequence, the Coriolis and centrifugal forces are identically equal to zero. Both beam elements use the same interpolating polynomials and have the same number of nodal coordinates. However, one of the elements has two nodes, while the other has four nodes. The results obtained using the two elements are compared with the results obtained using existing incremental methods. Unlike existing large rotation vector formulations, the results of this paper show that no special numerical integration methods need to be used in order to satisfy the principle of work and energy when the absolute nodal coordinate formulation is used. These results show that this formulation can be used in manufacturing applications such as high speed forming and extrusion problems in which the element cross section dimensions significantly change.

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In this paper a study of the optimum design of squeeze film dampers for multimode rotors is presented. The optimum design program obtains the best possible damper parameters for a given rotor to satisfy the minimization requirements for the objective function. The objectives are to minimize the amplitude response of the rotor at the critical speed, minimize the force transmitted to the support at the operating speed, or maximize the power dissipated by the damper. A combination of these objectives can also be used, with weighting factors to weigh the importance of each of these objectives. These are the possible objectives for the design of squeeze film dampers for aircraft engine applications. The basis of the optimum design program is an extremely fast algorithm which is able to quickly calculate the unbalance response of a rotor, for circular centered orbits of the journal in the damper. A commercial routine is used for the optimization, and is based on a complex direct search technique. The variation of the optimum clearance, length, and retainer spring stiffness are plotted against various rotor parameters. Recommendations for the design of squeeze film dampers are made. Applications to an aircraft engine illustrate the power of the developed algorithm.