A Lower Pad Adjustable Bearing Reducing Vibration Response of Rotor Systems During Acceleration

Abstract A lower pad movable bearing is proposed which has the ability to change the lubricating performance of the journal bearing. The structure and working principle of the adjustable bearing are introduced. This bearing can adjust the working status of the rotor system by changing the position of the bearing pad and reduces the vibration amplitude of rotor. In this paper, a simple rotor bearing finite element model is used to study the vibration response of the rotor system. Through research, it is found that larger ellipticity can effectively reduce the amplitude of the rotor when the rotor speed is running at a certain speed away from the critical speed, and the vibration suppression effect can reach 67%. When the rotor passes the critical speed, reducing the ellipticity can significantly reduce the resonance amplitude of the rotor, and the vibration suppression effect reaches about 37%. In addition, when the rotational speed increases to twice the critical speed, the oil film oscillation occurs under light load condition, which can be suppressed by reducing the ellipticity. Adjustable bearing can then be proposed to adaptively improve the vibration of the rotor system based on the rotor speeds.