7.1.2.

1 Oil whip
Oil whip is a self-excited vibration caused by the oil film
in sleeve bearings, and occurs if the signs of the cross-
coupling stiffnesses of the oil film kxy and kyx are opposite,
where the suffixes x and y denote the horizontal and
vertical direction, respectively [5]. Oil whip is a very
destructive vibration, and may cause the failure of
the journal bearing and the rotor itself. Therefore, it is
indispensable to design the rotor so as to prevent oil
whip under all operating conditions.
The features of oil whip are shown in Fig. 7.6, and are
summarized as follows:

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Figure 7.6 . Typical oil whip.

1.
Oil whip occurs when the rotor speed increases to
more than twice the first critical speed of the rotor. In
many cases once oil whip (excessive asynchronous
vibration at the natural frequency of the first mode)
 occurs, it continues unless the rotor speed is
decreased.
2.
The frequency of the excessive vibration caused by
oil whip is equal to the natural frequency of the first
mode of the rotor.
3.
Oil whip occurs and disappears suddenly,
and hysteresis exists for the rotor speed at which
this happens.
In recent rotor designs, the dynamic properties (stiffness
and damping) of the sleeve bearing are obtained based
on thermo-hydrodynamic lubrication (THL) theory, and
then the stability of the whole rotor system is evaluated.
Oil whip can be prevented completely if the stiffness of
the rotor is increased so that the natural frequency of the
first mode of the rotor system is more than half the
maximum rotor speed. However, this corrective action
will sometimes be difficult in reality for high-
capacity steam turbines. Therefore, the
steam turbine rotor is usually stabilized by using
stabilizing bearings. The types of bearings commonly
used in steam turbines, in decreasing order of stability,
are: tilting-pad bearing, multilobe bearing, elliptical-lobe
bearing, and cylindrical bearing.
Self-excited vibration with small amplitude, which occurs
at a lower rotor speed than oil whip, is called oil whirl.