6533b7ddfe1ef96bd1273679

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Rotor whirl damping by dry friction suspension systems

subject

description

An efficient and automatic attenuation technique for the whirling motion of rotating machinery can be achieved by supporting the journal boxes elastically and providing them with suitable rubbing surfaces subject to dry friction normal to the shaft axis. The critical flexural speeds are easily cut off and the whirl amplitude is minimized throughout the frequency range. Confining the usual operative angular speed of the rotor in the range of adhesive contact between the dry friction surfaces, there is no significant increase of power dissipation or heat production as a whole due to this type of suspension system, whose task is just to suppress the resonant peaks when passing the critical speeds. Moreover, the wear of the rubbing surfaces can be easily compensated by use of suitable spring loading systems for the friction contact. The dry friction damping is also compared with an equivalent viscous damping, where the equivalence has to be understood in terms of work dissipated per single revolution of the rotor. As for other conventional cases, the shaft hysteresis is found to exert a destabilizing effect above the first critical speed, which however can be compensated by the other dissipation sources. The system stability is here studied perturbing the periodic motion and applying the Floquet theory.