Oil-free microturbomachinery (MTM) are inevitably subjected to base or
foundation excitations: multiple periodic load excitations from internal combustion (IC)
engines in turbochargers, for example. Too large base excitations can produce severe
damage, even failure, due to hard collision or rubbing contact between a rotor and its
bearings. Therefore, it is paramount to evaluate the reliability of rotor-air bearing
systems to withstanding base load excitations.
In 2008, intermittent shock excitations, up to 30 g (pk-pk), were introduced to a
test rig consisting of a rotor (0.825 kg) supported on two hybrid flexure pivot tilting pad
gas bearings (FPTPBs). The experiments demonstrated the reliability of the gas
bearings to withstanding external transient load excitations. Presently, a shaker delivers
periodic load excitations to the base plate supporting the test rig. The whole system,
weighing 48 kg, is supported on two soft coil springs and its lowest natural frequency is
~5 Hz. The rod connecting the shaker to the base plate is not affixed rigidly to the test
rig base. The rod merely pushes on the base plate and hence the induced based motions
are intermittent with multiple impacts and frequencies. As with most practical
conditions, the base motion frequencies (5-12 Hz) are low respective to the operating
speed of the rotor-bearing system.
Rotor speed coast down tests evidence the rotor-bearing system natural frequency
when the gas bearings are supplied with feed pressures increasing from 2.36 to 5.08 bar
(ab). Shaker excitation induced rotor response, relative to the bearing housings,
contains the main input frequency (5-12 Hz) and its super harmonics; and because of
the intermittency of the base motions, it also excites the rotor-bearing system natural frequency, with smaller motion amplitudes than synchronous motion components.
The excitation of the system natural frequency does not mean rotordynamic instability.
With base induced motions, the rotor motion amplitude at the system natural
frequency increases as the gas bearing feed pressure decreases, as the rotor speed
increases, and as the shaker input excitation frequency increases (5-12 Hz). Hence, the
test rotor-air bearing system is highly sensitive to base motions, intermittent in character,
in particular when the gas bearings are supplied with a low feed pressure.
Predicted rotor motion responses obtained from XLTRC2 and an analytical
rigid rotor model, both including the (measured) periodic base motions, show good
correlation with the measurements.
The research results demonstrate further the applicability of gas bearings into oil-free
high speed MTM.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2009-08-7025 |
| Date | 14 January 2010 |
| Creators | Niu, Yaying |
| Contributors | San Andrés, Luis A. |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf |
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