Iterative Determination of Squeeze Film Damper Eccentricity for Flexible Rotor Systems

A method is presented to determine the eccentricity of multiple squeeze film dampers used in multishaft rotor bearing unbalance response analyses. The procedure is iterative and is based upon the secant root finding algorithm. Unbalance response is calculated using the iteratively determined eccentricity in closed form expressions of squeeze film stiffness and damping coefficients, for either long or short bearing theory. Circular centered synchronous operation is assumed. The method is demonstrated by determining the response of a single mass centrally preloaded rotor, a multimass flexible rotor supported by two squeeze films, and a multishaft flexible rotor system employing three squeeze film supports. The results obtained in the flexible rotor analysis are compared to test data, with the correlation found to be good. Due to rapid convergence and multiple squeeze film capability, the procedure is particularly suited to large multishaft flexible rotor-bearing system analysis.