Reducing Lateral Vibrations of a Rotor Passing Through Critical Speeds by Acceleration Scheduling

A method is presented for reducing the lateral response of an imbalanced rotor accelerating or decelerating through its first lateral bending critical speed by using a variable acceleration rate. A lumped parameter model along with a numerical integration scheme is used to simulate the response of a simply supported, single disk rotor during fast acceleration and deceleration through critical speed. The results indicate that the maximum response and/or the total vibrational energy of a rotor passing through the critical speed can be reduced significantly by using a variable acceleration schedule. That is, reducing the acceleration rate after the nominal critical speed is passed. These predictions were verified experimentally for a single disk rotor.