LIMIT-CYCLE ANALYSIS OF PLANAR ROTOR/AUTOBALANCER SYSTEM SUPPORTED ON HYDRODYNAMIC JOURNAL BEARING

In recent years, there has been much interest in the use of so-called automatic balancing devices (ABD) in rotating machinery. Essentially, ABDs or “autobalancers ” consists of several freely moving eccentric balancing masses mounted on the rotor, which, at certain operating speeds, act to cancel rotor imbalance at steady-state. This “automatic balancing” phenomena occurs as a result of nonlinear dynamic interactions between the balancer and rotor wherein the balancer masses naturally synchronize with the rotor with appropriate phase and cancel the imbalance. However, due to inherent nonlinearity of the autobalancer, the potential for other, undesirable, non-synchronous limit-cycle behavior exists. In such situations, the balancer masses do not reach their desired synchronous balanced steady-state position