Instability Threshold of a Rigid Rotor-Tilting Pad Journal Bearings System

Abstract

The stability of a rigid rotor supported on radial tilting pad journal bearings is analysed. This study has been tackled both for small unbalance values by linearising the equations of motion, and also in the case where, because of the high unbalance value, the rotor axis describes orbits with an amplitude such that the system's non-linearity cannot be ignored. In both cases the system's stable operation maps have been obtained and verified through numerical integration of the differential equations of motion.