Squeeze-Film Damper Predictions for Simulation of Aircraft Engine Rotordynamics

On aircraft engines, a common recurring problem is excessive vibration levels generated by unbalance. With rotors mounted on usual undamped ball bearings, an amount of damping is required to limit peak amplitudes at traversed critical speeds: a solution is to introduce external damping with squeeze-film dampers. Such dampers can be added with minor modifications of the rotor system design. This paper presents experimental and theoretical work in progress focused on the analysis of squeeze film dampers (SFD) based on serial aircraft engines design. Several squeeze-film geometries were tested to measure the influence of different design parameters as the fluid clearance and the groove feeding system. Next, a damper model based on the numerical solution of the Reynolds equation is correlated with the experimental data to obtain predictive global forces. It is shown that the theoretical model is a good predictive tool if it is correctly adjusted and if temporal inertia forces are negligible. The present damper model is further compared with analytical models taken from the literature which are obviously more appropriate to be used in whole engine rotordynamic analysis. The limits of the models are then underlined by comparisons with experimental results.