Determination of the transient vibrations of a rigid rotor attenuated by a semiactive magnetorheological damping device by means of computational modelling

Unbalance is the principal source of increase of time varying forces transmitted between the rotor and its stationary part. Their magnitudes can be considerably reduced if th e rotor is flexibly suspended and if the damping devices are added to the support elements. Their damping effect mu st be high for low rotor velocities and small for veloc- ities approximately higher than the critical one to minimize the transmitted forces and the vibrations amplitude. This implies to achieve maximum efficiency of the damping elements, their damping effect has to be adaptable to the current operating conditions. Such technological solutio n is offered by application of a squeeze film magne- torheological damper. Its hybrid variant consisting of two damping units (one controllable) in a serial arrangement is investigated in this paper. The damping takes place in two concentric lubricating films formed by normal and magnetorheological oils. The damper is equipped with an electric coil generating magnetic flux passing through the layer of the magnetorheological fluid. As resistanc e against its flow depends on magnetic induction, changing magnitude of the applied current enables to control the damping force. In the computational model, the rotor is considered to be absolutely rigid, unbalanced and the damping elements are represented by force couplings. The goal of the analysis is to study influence of the investigated magnetorheological damper on behaviour of a rigid rotor during different transient reg imes. A special attention is focused on passing the rotor through the critical speed and on planning the dependence of the applied current on speed of the rotor rotation to achieve the optimum compromise between minimizing the transmitted forces and maximum attenuation of the rotor vibrations