Dynamics and stability of elastic shaft-bearing systems with nonlinear bearing parameters

The dynamics and stability of a continuously elastic spinning shaft mounted on two dissimilar end bearings possessing nonlinear anisotropic and cross coupling stiffness and damping coefficients are analyzed. Sufficient conditions of system stability in the sense of Liapunov are derived. The developed stability criteria of the considered system have been shown to reduce to that of simpler models found in the pertinent literature. The effects of nonlinearity of bearing stiffness and damping parameters together with shaft stiffness parameter and other system parameters on the dynamic stability of the system are investigated. Several graphs demonstrating parametrically the influence of various system nondimensionalized parameters on system stability boundaries for typical cases are presented. Received on 26 October 1998