Investigation on nonlinear lateral-torsional coupled vibration of a rotor system with substantial unbalance

Substantial unbalance may be caused by fan blade off during the operation period of gas turbine engines,and related dynamic problems are very critical to the safety design of rotor system in aero-engine.This article aims to understand lateral-torsional coupled vibration of the rotor system with substantial unbalance.The governing equation of a modified unbalanced rotor system is established based on Lagrangian approach.Then,a mathematical analytical method is proposed in which a linear approximation is derived and the Floquet theory and Hill’s method are incorporated,from which the modal characteristics of the unbalanced rotor are obtained.The modal characteristics of the unbalanced rotor system are revealed comprehensively for the first time.Furthermore,the relation between the modes and responses of the unbalanced rotor is discussed in detail.The results show that the lateral vibration and torsional vibration of the unbalanced rotor are coupled through the inertial terms in the governing equations.Due to the coupling,veering and lock-in phenomena occur between the frequencies of the forward whirl mode and the torsional mode.Furthermore,lock-in can lead to a kind of principal instability.With regard to the response of the unbalanced rotor,both natural vibration components and enforced vibration components appear in the lateral response,while only natural vibration components appear during torsional vibration.Moreover,natural vibration components play a crucial role in the response within the principal instability region and cause divergence of the vibration amplitudes in the lateral and torsional directions.

Modal characteristics analysis for a flexible rotor with non-smooth constraint due to intermittent rub-impact

Intermittent rub-impact, during which the contact between rotor and stator is characterized by a ‘‘bouncing＂ or intermittent type of behavior, is one of the most common rubbing forms in rotating machinery. When the intermittent rub-impact occurs, the non-smooth constraint, which is the phenomenon that the system stiffness changes with respect to the state of contact and noncontact, will appear. The paper aims at discovering the possible effects of the non-smooth constraint on the flexible rotor＇s modal characteristics by theoretical and experimental methods. The qualitative description for non-smooth constraint is given for the intermittent rub-impact process, and the dynamic modeling for a rotor system with non-smooth constraint is carried out. Meanwhile, the analysis method is developed by Floquet theory and Hill＇s method to obtain the rotor＇s modal characteristics. The results reveal that the non-smooth constraint produced by the intermittent rubimpact will increase the modal frequencies and critical speeds of the rotor system significantly.Due to the time-varying features of the constraint stiffness, the modal frequencies for the intermittent rub-impact rotor present fluctuant changes with the increase of rotation speed, which is different from the general linear rotor system. The non-smooth constraint is possible to lead the rotor＇s instability, and the rotor＇s instable regions can be expanded significantly for the increase of average constraint stiffness, constraint amplitude and contact time ratio. Non-smooth constraint could also expand the resonance speed and resonance sideband of the rotor system, which sometimes results in amplitude jump phenomenon.

Modal analysis strategy and nonlinear dynamic characteristics of complicated aero-engine dual-rotor system with rub-impact

This paper aims to gain insight into the nonlinear modal characteristics and the possible influence of the modes on the responses for the practical dual-rotor system with rub-impact in aero-engine.The finite solid element method combined with a constraint stiffness model produced by rub-impact is introduced to build the governing equation of the complicated nonlinear dual-rotor system.In order to deal with the efficiency and numerical divergence in the process of solving the nonlinear modes of this large-scale nonlinear system,an analysis strategy is proposed by integrating a two-layer reduction technique into the harmonic balance method.The effectiveness of the analysis strategy is validated by applying to a simple rotor system,which can easily obtain the theoretical result.Based on the modeling method and analysis strategy,the modal characteristics of an aero-engine dual-rotor system with rub-impact are revealed.The results show that the modal frequency of the dual-rotor system increases when rub-impact occurs and has the feature of interval,which allows us to obtain the critical speeds of the rubbing system by traditional Campbell diagram.The rotation direction is an important factor since it can not only affect the gyroscopic effect but also change the friction effect of the rub-impact.It is found that the modal frequencies of the counter-rotation dual-rotor are less than those of co-rotation condition.More importantly,the forward modes of the counter-rotation dual-rotor may be instable when rub-impact occurs at a certain rotor,while the corresponding modes under the co-rotation condition are always stable.Furthermore,by analyzing the rubbing response of the dual-rotor,it is found that the modal characteristics have an important influence on rotor’s response.The instable forward modes existing in the counter-rotation dual-rotor may lead to the divergence of the response when passing the corresponding critical speed.

Application of complex nonlinear modes to determine dry whip motion in a rubbing rotor system

Dry whip motion is an instability of rubbing rotor system and may cause catastrophic failures of rotating machinery.Up to now,the related mechanisms of the dry whip is still not well understood.This paper aims to build the relationship between the complex nonlinear modes and the dry whip motion,and propose an effective method to predict the response characteristics and existence boundary of the dry whip through complex nonlinear modes.For the first time,the paper discusses how to use the complex nonlinear modes to predict the dry whip systematically,and as a consequence,the mechanism of the relationship between the complex nonlinear mode and the dry whip is revealed.The results show that the Backward Whirl(BW)mode motion of the rubbing rotor system dominates the response characteristics and the existence boundary of dry whip.The whirl amplitude and whirl frequency of dry whip are equal to the modal amplitude and modal frequency of the BW mode at the jump up point where the modal damping is equal to zero.The existence boundary corresponds to the critical rotation speed where the minimum of the modal damping of the BW mode motion is exactly equal to zero.Moreover,the proposed nonlinear modal method in this article is very effective for the prediction of dry whip of the more complicated practical rotor system,which has been verified by applying the predicted method into a rubbing rotor test rig.