Justification Flexible damped supports allow the safe operation and structural isolation of rotors in turbomachinery. Support flexibility controls the location of the rigid mode critical speeds, and support damping aids to reduce the amplitudes of vibration while crossing resonant frequencies and provides a safety margin to sudden loads due to blade loss events, shocks, etc.
Rotor supports comprise one or more mechanical elements designed to provide the desired action.
Although the engineering design may use the simple superposition of components and their effects, the practical implementation and field verification of flexible damped supports is difficult due to their increasing mechanical complexity and the added difficulties associated with pedestal support impedances and other connecting elements. Presently, there is a need to develop adequate experimental procedures and reliable identification procedures to estimate the equivalent force coefficients of complex bearing supports. The resulting methodology will ultimately validate predictive tools and further applications for increasingly stringent operating conditions. Development of procedure to extract the equivalent parameters from imbalance response measurements. Only TRC members have access to these reports.