Synchronous Position Recovery Control for Flexible Rotors in Contact with Auxiliary Bearings

This paper details a methology for the active recovery of contact free levitation of a rotor from a state of persistent contact with auxiliary bearings. An analytical method to describe contact dynamics of flexible rotors is presented. It shows that synchronous unbalance forces can cause a rotor to adopt stable contact modes, which are characterized by periodic motion and a fixed contact point in a rotating frame of reference. Based on these observations, a recovery strategy is developed to return the rotor to a contact free state. Compensation forces may be applied by magnetic bearings to reduce the effective synchronous forcing which is driving the contact, so that the rotor can progress to a contact free orbit. It is shown that even in the presence of highly nonlinear contact dynamic effects, a linear finite element rotor model can be used to calculate appropriate influence coefficients. The contact recovery procedure is successfully verified by simulations and measurements on a flexible rotor test facility. Allowable bounds on the phase of the synchronous recovery forces are investigated and limitations of the method are discussed.