Abstract. The paper considers an impact of viscous linear and cubic
nonlinear damping of the elastic support on nonlinear vibrations of a
vertical hard gyroscopic unbalanced rotor, taking into account nonlinear
stiffness of the support material. Analyzing the research results shows that
linear and cubic nonlinear damping can significantly suppress the resonance
peak of the fundamental harmonic, eliminate the jumping phenomena of the
nonlinear system. In non-resonance areas where the velocity is higher than
the critical one, cubic nonlinear damping, unlike linear one, can slightly
suppress amplitude of the rotor vibration. Therefore, in the high-velocity
area, only nonlinear damping can maintain performance of a vibration
isolator. In resonance area, an increase in linear or cubic nonlinear
damping significantly suppresses the ability to absolute displacement. In
non-resonance area, where the rotational velocity is lower than the critical
one, they have almost no impact on ability to absolute displacement. In high
velocity area, an increase in nonlinear damping may slightly increase the
moment of force transmissibility, but linear damping has almost no impact on
it. The obtained results can be successfully used to produce passive
vibration isolators used for damping the vibrations of rotary machines,
including gyroscopic ones.