Instability boundary for rotor-hydrodynamic bearing systems, part 2: Rotor with external flexible damped support

A rotor-hydrodynamic bearing system having external flexible damped bearing supports is more complicated than that discussed in Part 1 but it can provide a means to improve the stability of the rotor system. A model for both vertical and horizontal analysis is developed first. Then, the analytical study on the vertical rotor is conducted. The results show that there can be up to four threshold speeds in this configuration that form a consecutive regional pattern, taking turns by stable or unstable regions. Furthermore, the numerical calculation by MATLAB is carried out to obtain the results for the horizontal system. The stability maps for various parametric configurations are presented. It has been shown that the value of support damping has a strong effect on the first several lower threshold speeds. But it has little effect on the last top threshold speed which is mainly determined by the portion of journal mass. Within a certain range of external damping value, the first several regions of instability can be reduced or eradicated. As far as the entire stability map is concerned, there is an optimum range of support damping that can make the rotor have only one top threshold speed over the entire running speed range. When the support stiffness is increased, the system stability map becomes narrow which means a small support stiffness is good for broadening the range of optimum external damping.