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International audience; The damping in a carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP) laminate is greater than that which occurs in most metallic materials. In the supercritical regime, the damping can trigger unstable whirl oscillations, which can have catastrophic effects. The vibrations occurring in a supercritical composite drive shaft are investigated here in order to predict instabilities of this kind. A simply supported carbon/epoxy composite tube mounted on viscoelastic supports is studied, using an approximation of the Rayleigh-Timoshenko equation. The damping process is assumed to be hysteretic. The composite behavior is described in terms of modulus and loss factor, taking homogenized values. The critical speeds are obtained in several analytical forms in order to determine the effects of factors such as the rotatory inertia, the gyroscopic forces, the transverse shear and the supports stiffness. Assuming that the hysteretic damping can be expressed in terms of the equivalent viscous model, the threshold speed is obtained in the form of an analytical criterion. The influence of the various factors involved is quantified at the first critical speed of a subcritical composite shaft previously described in the literature. The influence of the coupling mechanisms on the unsymmetrical composite laminate and the end fittings is also investigated using a finite element model. None of these parameters were found to have a decisive influence in this case. Those having the greatest effects were the transverse shear and the supports stiffness. The effects of the composite stacking sequence, the shaft length and the supports stiffness on the threshold speed were then investigated. In particular, drive shafts consisting only of ±45° or ±30° plies can be said to be generally unstable in the supercritical regime due to their very high loss factors.

International audience; The case of a rotating shaft with internal damping mounted either on elastic dissipative bearings or on infinitely rigid bearings with viscoelastic suspensions is investigated in order to obtain the stability region. A Euler–Bernoulli shaft model is adopted, in which the transverse shear effects are neglected and the effects of translational and rotatory inertia, gyroscopic moments, and internal viscous or hysteretic damping are taken into account. The hysteretic damping is incorporated with an equivalent viscous damping coefficient. Free motion analysis yields critical speeds and threshold speeds for each damping model in analytical form. In the case of elastic dissipative bearings, the present results are compared with the results of previous studies on finite element models. In the case of infinitely rigid bearings with viscoelastic suspensions, it is established that viscoelastic supports increase the stability of long shafts, thus compensating for the loss of efficiency which occurs with classical bearings. The instability criteria also show that the effect of the coupling which occured between rigid modes introducing external damping and shaft modes are almost more important than damping factor. Lastly, comparisons between viscous and hysteretic damping conditions lead to the conclusion that an appropriate material damping model is essential to be able to assess these instabilities.