Multibody modelling of the vibrations in an aircraft engine

Sammanfattning: During the assembly of aircraft engines, some clearance is left in the rolling bearings mainly to reduce friction. However this clearance might allow the rolling element to vibrate during flight. Indeed, unwanted vibrations called non-synchronous vibrations (NSV) appear on the data recorded by the sensors on some development engines. NSV can be dangerous for the engine so they are closely monitored.  To prevent the appearance of the NSV, they are investigated by the engineers as soon as they appear during tests. The main source of the NSV is most likely to be the rolling bearings in the rotor because they induce a non-linear behaviour. The bearings of development engines were investigated on Finite Element Method (FEM) software for example but other methods could bring a contribution for the understanding of the NSV.  In this study, a multibody modelling software is used to try to model and explain the observed sub-synchronous vibrations considered as NSV. A model of the rotor of a prototype engine on a FEM software is provided and then reduced to be implemented in the new software. The behaviour of this new model is tested through modal analysis and response to imbalance.  Once the model is properly set, a parametric study is performed to see the effect of the thrust, gravity, imbalance weight and clearance on the system. It shows that clearance and gravity are key parameters while thrust and the imbalance weight have a minor impact on the NSV. This study has also helped to fix the parameters used to reproduce the NSV observed in the experiments.  Then, a second study focus on the influence of the clearance of the roller bearings on the NSV. This study defines a range of clearance that can be implemented on the engine to avoid the NSV. It also proved that the vibrations were very sensitive to a small change in the clearance values.  Finally, by studying the previous configurations, a link between the stiffness of the bearing and the occurrence of the NSV was established. In fact, the NSV appear only when the two roller bearings both have no stiffness because the clearance is not filled by the radial load. The rolling element is thus free to vibrate in its ring. It was noticed that the NSV has more chance to occur if it has already come out earlier in the run-up of the engine.  The multibody software is therefore perfectly able to reproduce the vibrations in a rotor. It is now a tool that can be used during the development process.