Nonlinear Identification of a Squeeze-Film Damper

In this paper the authors describe an experimental study to identify the damping laws associated with a squeeze-film vibration damper. This is achieved by using a nonlinear filtering algorithm to process displacement responses of the damper ring to synchronous excitation and thus to estimate the parameters in an nth-power velocity model. The experimental facility is described in detail and a representative selection of results is included. The identified models are validated through the prediction of damper-ring orbits and comparison with observed responses.