Institute of Fundamental Technological Research

The commonly observed nowadays tendency to weight minimization of rotor-shafts of the rotating machinery leads to a decrease of shaft bending rigidity making a risk of dangerous stress concentrations and rubbing effects more probable. Thus, a determination of the optimal balance between reducing the rotor-shaft weight and assuring its admissible bending flexibility is a major goal of this study. The random nature of residual unbalances of the rotor-shaft as well as randomness of journal-bearing stiffness have been taken into account in the framework of robust design optimization. Such a formulation of the optimization problem leads to the optimal design that combines an acceptable structural weight with the robustness with respect to uncertainties of residual unbalances – the main source of bending vibrations causing the rubbing effects. The applied robust optimization technique is based on using Latin hypercubes in scatter analysis of the vibration response. The so-called optimal Latin hypercubes are used as experimental plans for building kriging approximations of the objective and constraint functions. The proposed method has been applied for the optimization of the typical single-span rotor-shaft of the 8-stage centrifugal compressor.

Rotor-shaft system, Robust design optimization, Lateral vibrations, Rubbing effects, Random unbalance distribution

The aim of this paper is to create new type of plastic limit design procedures where the influence of the limited load carrying capacity of the beam-to-column connections of elasto-plastic steel (or composite) frames under multi-parameter static loading and probabilistically given conditions are taken into consideration. In addition to the plastic limit design to control the plastic behaviour of the structure, bound on the complementary strain energy of the residual forces is also applied. If the design uncertainties (manufacturing, strength, geometrical) are taken into consideration at the computation of the complementary strain energy of the residual forces the reliability based extended plastic limit design problems can be formed. Two numerical procedures are elaborated. The formulations of the problems yield to nonlinear mathematical programming which are solved by the use of sequential quadratic algorithm.

reliability analysis, limit analysis, residual strain energy, Monte Carlo simulation, optimal design

In the paper a stochastic method for fault detection and identification in the shafts of rotating machines is proposed. This approach is based on the Monte Carlo simulations of rotor-shaft lateral–torsional–longitudinal vibrations mutually coupled by transverse cracks of various possible and randomly selected depths and locations on the shaft. For this purpose the structural hybrid model of a real faulty object is applied. This model is characterized by a high practical reliability and great computational efficiency, so important for many hundred thousand single numerical simulations necessary for a creation of the databases applied for inverse problem solution finally leading to crack identification. These databases are created with an arbitrary assumed probability densities of crack parameters which ensures appropriate spread of the dynamic responses of the considered faulty mechanical system. A sufficiently large database determined for the investigated object enable us to estimate almost immediately, i.e. within less than 1 s, the crack depth and axial position with identification errors not exceeding 9% and 5%, respectively. Thus, the proposed method seems to be a very convenient diagnostic tool for engineering applications in the industry.

Rotor-shaft system, Dynamic diagnostics, Crack identification, Monte Carlo simulation, Coupled vibration analysis

In the paper several stochastic methods for detection and identification of cracks in the shafts of rotating machines are proposed. All these methods are based on the Monte Carlo simulations of the rotor-shaft lateral-torsional-longitudinal vibrations mutually coupled by transverse cracks of randomly selected depths and locations on the shaft. For this purpose there is applied a structural hybrid model of a real cracked rotor-shaft. This model is characterized by a high practical reliability and great computational effi-ciency, so important for hundreds of thousands numerical simulations necessary to build databases used in solving the inverse problem, i.e. crack parameter identifications. In order to ensure a good identification accuracy, for creating the Monte Carlo samples of data points there are proposed special probability density functions for locations and depths of the crack. Such an approach helps in enhancing databases corresponding to the most probable faults of the rotor-shaft system of the considered rotor machine. In the presentedstudy six different database sizes are considered to compare identification efficiency and accuracy of considered methods. A sufficiently large database enables us to estimate almost immediately (usually in less than one second) the crack parameters with precision that is in most of the cases acceptable in practice. Then, as a next stage, one of the proposed fast improvement algorithms can be applied to refine identification results in a reasonable time. The proposed methods seem to provide very convenient diagnostic tools for industrial applications.

Crack rotor dynamics, Nonlinear and parametric vibrations, Hybrid modeling, Monte Carlo simulation, Crack identification methods

An assessment of structural reliability requires multiple evaluations of the limit state function for various realizations of random parameters of the structural system. In the majority of industrial applications the limit state functions cannot be expressed explicitly in terms of the random parameters but they are specified using selected outcomes of the FE analysis. In consequence, in order to be useful in practice, a structural reliability analysis program should be closely integrated with a FE module or it should be interfaced with an advanced external FE program. When the FE source code is not available, which is usually the case, the only option is to establish a communication between the reliability analysis program and an external FE software through the batch mechanism of data modification, job submission and results extraction. The main subject of this article is to present the reliability analysis capabilities of STAND software, which is being developed in the Institute of Fundamental Tech no logical Research of Polish Academy of Sciences. A special emphasis is put on the issues related to it s interfacing with external general purpose FE codes. It is shown that when shape type random variables are used, leading to modifications of the FE mesh, or when the limit state function contains numerical noise, standard algorithms for localizing the design point often fail to converge and a special method based on some response surface approximation is needed. A proposition of such a strategy that employs an adaptive response surface approximation of the limit state function is presented in this article. Development of a reliability analysis program is a challenging project and calls for such a code organization, which would facilitate a simultaneous work of many programmers and allow for easy maintenance and modifications. The so-called object-oriented programming seems to provide a convenient framework to realize these objectives. The object-oriented approach is used in STAND development. The advantages of this programming paradigm and a short description of the STAND’s class hierarchy are presented in the text. The study is concluded with two numerical examples of interfacing STAND with state of the art commercial FE programs.

Reliability, optimization software

The aim of this paper is to take into consideration the influence of the limited load carrying capacity of the connections on the plastic limit state of elasto-plastic steel (or composite) framed structures under multi-parameter stochastic loading and probabilistically given conditions. In addition to the plastic limit design to control the plastic behaviour of the structure, bound on the complementary strain energy of the residual forces is also applied. This bound has significant effect for the load parameter. If the design uncertainties (manufacturing, strength, geometrical) are expressed by the calculation of the complementary strain energy of the residual forces a reliability based extended limit design problem is formed. The formulations of the problems yield to nonlinear mathematical programming which are solved by the use of sequential quadratic algorithm. The bi-level optimization procedure governed by the reliability index calculation.

limit analysis of frames, reliability analysis, optimization

Possibly the most common application of spot welding is in the automobile manufacturing industry, where it is almost universally used to weld the sheet-metal car components. However, due to manufacturing inaccuracies and fatigue failures an important number of spot welds may be missing in an operational vehicle. It seems that to properly analyse the reliability of such structures, in particular crashworthiness reliability, the spot weld failures must be considered. Representing properties of each spot weld in a stochastic model by corresponding random variables is extremely inefficient. Therefore, in this article an approach is proposed for handling spot-weld defects in the reliability analysis by accounting for their averaged influence on a failure criterion. The approach consists of the appropriate treatment of a random noise component of the limit state function. The noise results from the strategy of deleting a certain number of randomly selected spot-weld elements from the finite element model each time the limit state function value is computed. Dealing with noisy limit state functions in structural reliability analysis is a challenging task. The only method that seems to be insensitive to this phenomenon is Monte Carlo sampling, which for most of the applications of practical interest is prohibitively expensive. Having this in mind, a method based on the algorithm proposed by Zou et al. and published in the journal of Reliability Engineering and System Safety in 2002 is investigated in this article. The method combines the best features of the first-order reliability method, the response surface technique and the importance sampling method to achieve both accuracy and efficiency. A detailed study on the reliability of thin-walled s-rail subjected to crash is performed. Some suggestions concerning the modification of the original algorithm are proposed.

crashworthiness reliability, response surface approximation, adaptive importance sampling, spot weld failures

The commonly observed nowadays tendency to weight minimization of rotor-shafts of the rotating machinery leads to a decrease of shaft bending rigidity making a risk of dangerous stress concentrations and rubbing effects more probable. Thus, a determination of the optimal balance between reducing the rotor-shaft weight and assuring its admissible bending flexibility is a major goal of this study. The random nature of residual unbalances of the rotor-shaft as well as randomness of journal bearing stiffness have been taken into account in the framework of robust design optimization. Such a formulation of the optimization problem leads to the optimal design that combines an acceptable structural weight with the robustness with respect to uncertainties of residual unbalances, the main source of bending vibrations causing the rubbing effects. The applied robust optimization technique is based on using Latin hypercubes in scatter analysis of the vibration response. The so-called optimal Latin hypercubes are used as experimental plans for building kriging approximations of the objective and constraint functions. The proposed method has been applied for the optimization of the typical single-span rotor-shaft of the 8-stage centrifugal compressor.

Rotor-shaft system, robust design optimization, lateral vibrations, rubbing effects, random unbalance distribution