State-of-the-art rotordynamic analyses of pumps

State-of-the-art analyses for the rotordynamic assessment of pumps and specific requirements for the simulation tools are described. Examples are a horizontal multistage pump with two fluid film bearings in atmospheric pressure, a horizontal submerged multistage pump with many bearings, and a submerged vertical single-stage pump with water-lubricated bearings. The rotor of the horizontal pump on two bearings is statically overdetermined by the seals and the static bearing forces depend on the deflection in the seals and the bearings. The nonlinear force-displacement relation in the bearings is considered in this paper. The stability of pumps is assessed by Campbell diagrams considering linear seal and bearing properties. Cylindrical bearings can have a destabilizing effect in the case of low loads as in the examples of the submerged pumps. For the pump with many bearings, the influence of the bearing ambient pressure and the bearing specific load on the stability is analyzed. For the vertical pump, the limit cycle, i.e. the vibration level of stabilization, is determined with a nonlinear analysis. All examples have a practical background from engineering work, although they do not exactly correspond to real cases. Analyses were performed with the rotordynamic software MADYN 2000.