Effects of Bearings and Housing on Mode Localization of a Nearly Cyclic Symmetric System

This paper is to study how flexible bearings and housing affect mode localization of a nearly cyclic symmetric system with mistune. A finite element analysis is first conducted on a reference system that consists of a circular disk and 24 blades with mistune. The disk is annular with an inner rim and an outer rim. A fixed boundary condition is imposed at the inner rim, while the 24 blades with mistune are evenly attached to the outer rim and subjected to a free boundary condition. As a result of the mistune, the reference system presents 26 localized torsional modes as well as 24 localized in-plane modes in its blade vibration. When the fixed inner rim is replaced by a bearing support (i.e., an elastic boundary condition), not only the localized torsional modes can change their natural frequencies and mode shapes but also the number of the localized torsional modes may be increased to 28 in some range of bearing stiffness. Similarly, when the bladed-disk reference system is mounted on a stationary housing via a bearing support, the number of the localized in-plane modes can change from 24 to 33 modes. Moreover, localized mode shapes change significantly, and some of them involve significant housing deformation. To understand this phenomenon theoretically, we first demonstrate that the presence of bearing and housing provides additional degrees of freedom, which, in turn, allow the bladed-disk system to have additional disk modes. When the bearing and housing stiffness is properly tuned, some of these additional disk modes may possess significant torsional or in-plane displacement components in the blades. If these additional modes happen to have a natural frequency that is close to those of the localized modes of the reference system, these additional modes will join the localized modes to form new localized modes. As a result, the number of localized modes increases and the mode shapes change significantly.