In rotor-bearing system, the misalignment can lead to secondary faults, such as the rub-impact fault. How the development of misalignment could affect the rub-impact force and other dynamic responses is important for the vibration control and fault diagnosis of rotor system. In this paper, a mathematical model of a two-shaft rotor-bearing- gear coupling system is established. The model is validated through the misaligned force of gear coupling, the supporting force of the lubricated ball bearing and the whole rotor response. To overcome the limit of traditional approaches and further dig out fault characteristics, the time-frequency method is introduced to analyze the dynamic response from both the time and frequency domains points of view. It is found the misalignment effect on rotor dynamic responses is mainly focused in high rotating speed range. The development of misalignment has an obvious adverse effect on the rotor stability. Some intermittent components in low frequency range due to the occurrence and development of misalignment can be found affecting the rotor stability at low speed range, and the high frequency rub-impact components can be found responsible for the unstable state of rotor.

The lubrication performance of journal bearings with different sorts of uniformly distributed micro-spherical textures are studied in this paper. Geometries and dynamic models of journal bearings with pure concave/convex textures are developed. The validity of the proposed models is verified against the oil film pressure distribution from the literature. The effects of geometry parameters (the texture depth and the area density) on the load capacity and the friction coefficient of the bearing are analyzed and discussed. Results indicate that: the bearing load capacity is reduced by the concave spherical texture, but enhanced by the convex texture; both the concave and convex textures have a very slight influence on the friction coefficient. Aiming to further improve the bearing lubrication performance, a novel concave-convex composite texture is proposed and modelled. Results show that the composite texture can significantly improve both the load capacity and the friction coefficient, because the concave spherical segments among the convex ones protect the oil film from rupture near the main load region. The oil film region is expanded by the composite texture as well.

The failure of premature thermal cycling spalling off is the bottleneck problem currently faced by yttrium oxide partially stabilized zirconia (YSZ) ceramic-based sealing coatings. Studies on the thermal cycling performance of coatings with “brick-mud” structures were carried out by experimental and simulation methods in this paper. The results showed that, as the thickness of “mud” layer increased, the bonding strength of the “brick-mud” structure coatings gradually decreased. When the thickness of the “mud” layer was about 3 μm and 10 μm, the thermal cycling lives of the T1 and T2 coatings were improved by 90.0% and 135.7%, respectively, compared with conventional coating (T0 coating), while that of the T3 coating (containing thick “mud” layers of about 20 μm) was decreased by 81.4%. The stress field of M2 “mud” layers with different thicknesses was subjected to a comprehensive effect by thermal mismatch stress and pores in “brick” layer. Compared with the medium and thick “mud” layers, the thin “mud” layer sustained obvious larger ${\sigma }_{22 max}$ and ${\sigma }_{12 max}$, indicating its potential for the preferential initiation of transverse microcracks. In addition, the thin “mud” layer withstood the largest ${\sigma }_{11 max}$ and had the strongest potential for longitudinal crack growth. Both transverse and longitudinal cracking could consume energy during thermal cycling and reduce the stress concentration at the top coating/bond coating interface. These were the main reasons for the improvements in the thermal cycling performances of the T1 and T2 coatings. The degree of crack deflection and the capacity of energy dissipation in the “mud” layer increased significantly with its thickness. However, the propagation length of transverse cracks also gradually increased in the meantime. Especially when the “mud” layer was 20 μm, the length of the transverse cracks increased rapidly. Thus, early interlayer delamination failure occurred in the T3 coating during thermal cycling.

Magnetorheological damper (MRD), a semi-active control device, has the stability of the passive control device and the adaptive ability of the active control device. It is considered to be an ideal replacement for the squeeze film damper (SFD) and has been extensively investigated. However, the effect mechanism of MRD to a rotor system is still unclear, which will influence the structural design and control strategy of MRD. This paper aims to propose a general MRD excitation model for a rotor system and discover the effect mechanism. First, the effects of current and eccentricity on mechanical properties of MRD are studied in detail and approaches suppressing the vibration amplitude of a rotor system are put forward. Then, a general model considering MRD, ball bearing and squirrel cage is proposed. Based on the finite element method, the dynamic equations of a rotor-bearing-squirrel cage system with MRD and mass imbalance are presented. Finally, the influences of MRD on the dynamic characteristics of the rotor system are investigated, and the effect mechanism is discovered. In addition, the nonlinearity which is not desirable as it causes fluctuating stresses in the main components of the rotor system and eventually leads to their failure due to fatigue, are observed. The changes of damping and stiffness of MRD can alter the damping performance of MRD and the suitable range of current forms the zone of effective damping, which lays helpful guidance for the design and application of the MRD.

In this paper, the dynamic behavior of a rotor-bearing-SFD system with the inner race defect of bearing is investigated. The contact force between the rolling element and the race is calculated in Hertzian contact and elastohydrodynamic lubrication condition. The supporting force of the SFD is simulated by integrating the pressure distribution derived from Reynolds’s equation. The equations of motion of the rotor-bearing-SFD system are derived and solved using the fourth-order Runge-Kutta method. The dynamic behavior and the fault characteristics are analyzed with two configurations of the SFD: (1) mounted on the unfaulted bearing and (2) mounted on the faulty bearing. According to the analysis of time-frequency diagram, waterfall plot, and spectral diagram, the results show that the characteristics of inner race defects on bearing frequencies are related to the characteristic multiple frequency of the inner race defect and the fundamental frequency. The speed and defect width have different influence on the distribution and amplitude of frequency. The SFD can enhance the system stability under the bearing fault but the enhancement decreases with the increasing speed. Meanwhile, the beneficial effect of the SFD varies according to the mounted position in the rotor system.

As an important part of the turbomachinery, the rotor–bearing system has been upgraded to provide a high rotating speed in order to meet the demand of high power production. With increasing demand for stability, the squeeze film damper (SFD) has been widely used in industrial machinery because it can reduce the vibration amplitude and suppress the external force. Usually, it shows inadaptability under the different working conditions where the SFD parameters didn’t change appropriately. Therefore, the reasonable choice of operational parameters of SFD is the key solution that can provide viscous damping effectively and restrain the nonlinear vibration generated by faults. In this paper, the mathematical model of a rotor-ball bearing-SFD system considering the misalignment fault and misalignment-rubbing coupling fault is built first. Then the dynamic characteristics under typical working conditions (ω = 1000 rad/s) of the faulted rotor are discussed. The vibration attenuation effects of the SFD parameters selected by using the multi-objective optimization method on the dynamic responses are analyzed. The results show that when the rotor system operates under different states, the value and the sensitivity of optimization parameters are altered. With no fault, the amplitude of fundamental frequency decrease 23%. With the misalignment fault, the amplitude of the fundamental frequency decreases by 43.4%, the amplitude of 2× fundamental frequency decreases by 27.5%, and the amplitude of 3× fundamental frequency decreases by 66.7%. With the misalignment-rubbing coupling fault, the amplitude of fundamental frequency reduces by 7.4%, the amplitude of 2× fundamental frequency drops by 51.5%, and the amplitude of 3× fundamental frequency drops by 16.8%. Overall, the feasibility of the optimization method of the variable-structured SFD operational parameters for the faulted rotor system is verified. These parametric analyses are very helpful in the development of a high-speed rotor system and provide a theoretical reference for the vibration control and optimal design of rotating machinery.