Continuous Rotor Dynamics of Multi-Disc and Multi-Span Rotor: A Theoretical and Numerical Investigation on the Identification of Bearing Coefficients from Unbalance Responses

Identification of bearings’ stiffness and damping coefficients, which strongly affects the dynamic characteristics of rotors, is another inverse problem of Rotor Dynamics. In this paper, aiming at multi-disc and multi-span rotors, two novel algorithms are proposed for identifying each bearing’s coefficients based on the continuous rotor dynamic analysis method. A linear functional relationship between the main complex coefficients and the cross-coupled complex coefficients is obtained, which eliminates the coupling between the coefficients and the rotor unbalance in the forward problem. Then, Algorithm I is proposed. However, it is only suitable for rolling-bearing. To solve the problem, changing the rotating speed slightly is proposed to solve the difficulty that another set of equations cannot be developed because the slope of the proposed linear function is constant when the rotating speed is maintained at a fixed speed. Then, Algorithm II, which can be applied to both rolling-bearing and oil-journal bearing, is provided. Numerical investigations are conducted to study the two methods. It is indicated that there should be a measuring point, called an adjustment point, near each bearing, whose coefficients should be identified, to obtain high identification accuracy. Moreover, the identification accuracy of the two algorithms is strongly related to sensor resolution. When the measuring errors of all the required unbalance responses are zero or the same, the identification errors are almost equal to zero. In conclusion, the proposed algorithms provide a method for monitoring the stiffness and damping coefficients of all bearings in a multi-disc and multi-span rotor under operation conditions to predict rotor dynamic behavior for the safe and steady running of rotating machines.