A new efficient procedure to solve the nonlinear dynamics of a cracked rotor

The dynamic analysis of a cracked rotor with a breathing crack leads to the formulation of a nonlinear time-dependent problem. For the simple Jeffcott rotor model, this problem has been addressed using numerical integration methods that are very time consuming. A first simplification can be done assuming that the stiffness is a time-dependent function obtained with the quasi-static displacements of the shaft. In this study, we propose a new procedure to analyze the nonlinear dynamic of such a kind of cracked rotors using an iterative technique that transforms the full nonlinear problem in a succession of time-dependent linear ones. We show with different examples that this technique virtually gives the same results as the classical integration methods, but being much more efficient and achieving a significant saving of computation time. The calculations using the proposed method are over a 100 times faster than the corresponding to integrate the full nonlinear problem, being very helpful in on-line crack identification procedures. Also, this analysis shows that, in cases for which the vertical whirl amplitude is greater than the shaft weight static deflection, the use of simplified methods based on the quasi-static stiffness matrix could not be adequate.