Nonlinear modeling and dynamic analysis of the rotor-bearing system

To overcome the shortcomings of extreme time-consuming in solving the Reynolds equation, two efficient calculation methods, based on the free boundary theory and variational principles for the unsteady nonlinear Reynolds equation in the condition of Reynolds boundary, are presented in the paper. By employing the two mentioned methods, the nonlinear dynamic forces as well as their Jacobians of the journal bearing can be calculated saving time but with the same accuracy. Of these two methods, the one is called a Ritz model which manipulates the cavitation region by simply introducing a parameter to match the free boundary condition and, as a result, a very simple approximate formulae of oil-film pressure is being obtained. The other one is a one-dimensional FEM method which reduces the two-dimensional variational inequality to the one-dimensional algebraic complementary equations, and then a direct method is being used to solve these complementary equations, without the need of iterations, and the free boundary condition can be automatically satisfied. Meanwhile, a new order reduction method is contributed to reduce the degrees of freedom of a complex rotor-bearing system. Thus the nonlinear behavior analysis of the rotor-bearing system can be studied time-sparingly. The results in the paper show the high efficiency of the two methods as well as the abundant nonlinear phenomenon of the system, compared with the results obtained by the usual numerical solution of the Reynolds equation.