Ground-Based Response of a Spinning, Cyclic Symmetric Rotor Assembled to a Flexible Stationary Housing via Multiple Bearings

This paper is to study free response of a spinning, cyclic symmetric rotor assembled to a flexible housing via multiple bearings. In particular, the rotor spins at a constant speed ω₃, and the housing is excited via a set of initial displacements. The focus is to study ground-based response of the rotor through theoretical and numerical analyses. The paper consists of three parts. The first part is to briefly summarize an equation of motion of the coupled rotor-bearing-housing systems for the subsequent analyses. The equation of motion, obtained from prior research [1], employs a ground-based and a rotor-based coordinate system to the housing and the rotor, respectively. As a result, the equation of motion takes the form of a set of ordinary differential equations with periodic coefficients of frequency ω₃. To better understand its solutions, a numerical model is introduced as an example. In this example, the rotor is a disk with four radial slots and the housing is a square plate with a central shaft. The rotor and housing are connected via two ball bearings. The second part of the paper is to analyze the rotor’s response in the rotor-based coordinate system theoretically. When the rotor is at rest, let ω^H be the natural frequency of a coupled rotor-bearing-housing mode whose response is dominated by the housing. The theoretical analysis then indicates that response of the spinning rotor will possess frequency components ω^H ± ω₃ demonstrating the interaction of the spinning rotor and the housing. The theoretical analysis further shows that this splitting phenomenon results from the periodic coefficients in the equation of motion. The numerical example also confirms this splitting phenomenon. The last part of the paper is to analyze the rotor’s response in the ground-based coordinate system. A coordinate transformation shows that the ground-based response of the spinning rotor consists of two major frequency branches ω^H − (k + 1) ω₃ and ω^H − (k − 1) ω₃, where k is an integer determined by the cyclic symmetry and vibration modes of interest. The numerical example also confirms this derivation.