Automatic balancing of bladed-disk/shaft system via passive autobalancer devices

Autobalancers for rotor/bearing systems are passive devices consisting of eccentrically mounted balance masses that freely revolve around the rotor's axis of rotation. At certain supercritical speeds, the balancer mass positions naturally adjust to cancel the rotor imbalance. This automatic-balancing phenomena occurs as a result of nonlinear dynamic interaction between the balancer masses and the rotor's lateral vibration. Previous studies have found that autobalancers can effectively compensate for mass imbalance in planar rigid rotors such as hard-disk drives and flywheels, however, their use in bladed-disk and turbomachinery applications has not been previously considered. This study explores the dynamics and stability of a flexible bladed-disk/rotor-bearing system equipped with a dual-ball automatic-balancing device. It is found that the autobalancer effectively compensates for both mass and aerodynamic imbalances produced by a bladed-loss condition over a wide revolutions/minute range at speeds above the first lateral natural frequency. It is also shown that for stable automatic balancing to occur, the ratio of automatic balancer damping to the blade aerodynamic drag coefficient must be above some critical value. The analysis demonstrates that the automatic balancer is able to simultaneously reduce both bearing loads and blade deflections for a simulated blade-loss event. DOI: 10.2514/1.43832