Study on dynamic stiffness of supporting structure and its influence on vibration of rotors

The dynamic response of the rotor depends on not only itself but also the dynamical characteristics of the structures that support it. In this paper, the coupling vibration characteristics of the rotor and supporting structure are studied using one simple rotor-supports model firstly, and then the dynamic stiffness of the typical supporting structure of an aero-engine is investigated in use of both numerical and experimental methods. While, one simulation strategy is developed to include dynamic stiffness of realistic supports in the dynamical analysis of the rotor system. The simulated and tested results show that the dynamic stiffness of the supporting structure not only depends on the structural parameters but also is related to the frequency of the excitation force. The dynamic stiffness is affected by the damping and inertia effect when the excitation frequency is high and closed to the resonance frequency of the support, which may decrease the dynamic stiffness sharply. More resonance frequencies may be induced and the critical speed could be reduced or increased. While higher vibration response peak and overload of the bearing may also be caused by the varied dynamic stiffness, which needs to be avoided in the design of the rotor-supports system.