Investigating the Dynamics of a Ball-Spring Autobalancer in a Rotor with Non-Linear Bearings

Although the traditional automatic ball balancer (ABB) has numerous advantages, it has two major deficiencies, i.e., it has a limited balance stable region and it increases the vibration amplitude of the rotor at transient state. These deficiencies limit the applicability of ABBs. In this regard, a new type of ABB called “the Ball-spring autobalancer” has been proposed to resolve the mentioned deficiencies of the traditional ABBs. In order to investigate the capability of the Ball-spring AB in balancing rotors, it is necessary to study its dynamics accurately. The dynamics of a rotor with linear bearing equipped with a Ball-spring AB has been studied previously; however, in real situations, the bearings have nonlinear characteristics. Here, the dynamics of a rotor with nonlinear bearings equipped with a Ball-spring AB is investigated by the multiple scales method for the first time. The results show that the nonlinearity at the rotor bearings does not impair the advantages of the Ball-spring AB.