Normal form analysis of stator rub in rotating machinery

This work considers analysis of sustained impacting cycles of rotating shafts with potentially many disks. The insight that this is an internal resonance phenomena makes this an ideal system to be studied with the method of normal forms. However, the presence of arbitrary non smooth nonlinearities due to impact and rub mean that the method must be extended by incorporating an Alternating Frequency/Time (AFT) step to capture nonlinear forces. The process results in an elegant formulation that can model a very wide variety of rotor systems and is demonstrated by comparing against simulation of a contacting overhung rotor.