Identification of the unbalance distribution in flexible rotors

Abstract

This paper presents a new method for estimating unbalance distributions of flexible shafts and constant eccentricities of rigid disks based on the transfer matrix method for analyzing the steady-state responses of rotor-bearing systems, in which the transfer matrix of a flexible shaft is derived in a continuous sense with any spatial unbalance distribution. Rotary inertia, gyroscopic and transverse-shear effects are also included. When deflections and deflection angles of one free end are measurable, the unbalance distribution of shafts and disks can be estimated under operating conditions by the proposed method. The main advantage of this identification technique is that only the state vector of the one free end of the rotating shaft need to be measured. Justification of the method is presented by numerical simulations. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.