Shrink Fit Effects on Rotordynamic Stability: Experimental Study

This paper presents an experimental study of internal friction effects on two different test rotors with shrink fit and interference fit joints. One of the setups was a single-disk rotor with an interference fit joint to the main shaft through a mechanically adjustable tapered sleeve; the other setup was a two-disk rotor with a variable cross-section shaft, having the two disks shrunk fit into an aluminum sleeve at the ends. The slippage in these types of joints is known to be a potential source of sub-synchronous rotordynamic instability in rotating machines. The experimental results from the rotor setups show the presence of strong unstable sub-synchronous rotor vibrations initiated at operating speeds above the first critical speeds of the rotor-bearing systems. The experiments with the two-disk rotor demonstrated that different distributions of shrink fit at two locations (loose fit at one end; tight fit at the other end) were necessary to produce rotordynamic instability. The instability in that case caused complete wreckage of the test rig, showing that the sub-synchronous vibrations caused by slippage at interference fit joints are potentially dangerous to the safe operation of rotating machines. Furthermore, a critical radial interference (shrink fit) of 1 mils (25.4 μm) at speed was identified to cause an onset of instability in several of the experiments.