Investigation of Induced Unbalance Magnitude on Dynamic Characteristics of High-speed Turbocharger with Floating Ring Bearings

Abstract Due to operational wear and uneven carbon absorption in compressor and turbine wheels, the unbalance (me) vibration is induced and could lead to sub-synchronous vibration accidents for high-speed turbocharger (TC). There are very few research works that focus on the magnitude effects on such induced unbalance vibration. In this paper, a finite element model (FEM) is developed to characterize a realistic automotive TC rotor with floating ring bearings (FRBs). The nonlinear dynamic responses of the TC rotor system with different levels of induced unbalance magnitude in compressor and turbine wheels are calculated. From the results of waterfall and response spectral intensity plots, the bifurcation and instability phenomena depend on unbalance magnitude during the startup of TC. The sub-synchronous component 0.12× caused rotor unstable is the dominant frequency for small induced unbalance. The nonlinear effects of induced unbalance in the turbine wheel is obvious stronger than the compressor wheel. As the unbalance magnitude increases from 0.05 g·mm to 0.2 g·mm, the vibration component changes from mainly 0.12× to synchronous vibration 1×. When unbalance increases continuously, the rotor vibration response amplitude is rapidly growing and the 1× caused by the large unbalance excitation becomes the dominant frequency. A suitable un-balance magnitude of turbine wheel and compressor wheel for the high-speed TC rotor with FRBs is proposed: the value of induced un-balance magnitude should be kept around 0.2 g·mm.