The global responses characteristics of a rotor/stator rubbing system with dry friction effects

Rotor/stator rubbing systems may undertake a number of quite different responses. Recent experiments on rotor/stator rubbing have revealed that two or three different responses may coexist. In this paper the global response characteristics of a general rotor/stator rubbing system, which takes into account the dominant factors in the process of rotor/stator rubbing, especially, the dry friction effect that is mostly neglected in the previous works and is the main factor for the self-excited dry friction backward whirl, are studied. The different solutions of the piecewise nonlinear system are derived and their stability are analyzed to get the existence boundaries of the different responses. An overall picture of the global response characteristics of this model is then obtained by drawing the existence boundaries in a same parameter space. The present results provide good understanding on the coexistence of different rubbing responses observed in tests. Moreover, deeper insight into the types of coexistence of different rubbing responses and their relationship with the system parameters is gained. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.