BEHAVIOR OF A CRACKED ROTATING SHAFT DURING PASSAGE THROUGH A CRITICAL SPEED

A simply supported, rotating, Euler-Bernoulli shaft with a single, breathing, transverse crack is considered. The shaft is accelerated or decelerated past the fundamental critical speed at a constant rate, and the transient response is analyzed. Galerkin’s method and numerical integration of the resulting bilinear equations are used to obtain approximate time histories of the motion. The maximum response is determined, and the effects of the acceleration and deceleration rate, crack depth, crack position along the shaft, and eccentricity angle are investigated. Results are compared to those for a crack that remains open and to those for an uncracked shaft. © 1994 Academic Press Limited.