ME 354A

Vibration & Control

Lecture 01
Introduction -
Vibrations

Nalinaksh S. Vyas
Professor of Mechanical Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur
&
Chairman
Technology Mission for Indian Railways
• One of the classical subjects in Engineering.

• Spectrum very wide – any oscillatory behaviour

is loosely termed as vibrations.

• Restrict to mechanical vibrations only as

required by the machine designer – things like
oscillatory currents in electric circuits or
fluctuating temperature in a hot water system
to be left out.

• Related subjects like sound, noise and

physiological side of vibration will be left out.
 Vibrations
• Vibration is a mechanical phenomenon whereby oscillations occur about an
equilibrium point.
• The word comes from Latin vibrationem ("shaking, brandishing"). The oscillations
may be periodic, such as the motion of a pendulum—or random, such as the
movement of a tire on a gravel road.
• Vibration can be desirable: for example, the motion of the reed in a woodwind
instrument or harmonica, a mobile phone, or the cone of a loudspeaker.
• In many cases, however, vibration is undesirable, wasting energy and creating
unwanted sound. For example, the vibrational motions of engines, electric motors, or
any mechanical device in operation are typically unwanted.
• Such vibrations could be caused by imbalances in the rotating parts, uneven friction,
or the meshing of gear teeth. Careful designs usually minimize unwanted vibrations.
• The studies of sound and vibration are closely related. Sound, or pressure waves, are
generated by vibrating structures (e.g. vocal cords); these pressure waves can also
induce the vibration of structures (e.g. ear drum).
• Hence, attempts to reduce noise are often related to issues of vibration.
Tacoma Bridge
The 1940 Tacoma Narrows
Bridge, the first Tacoma
Narrows Bridge, was a
suspension bridge in the U.S.
state of Washington that
spanned the Tacoma Narrows
strait of Puget Sound between
Tacoma and the Kitsap
Peninsula. It opened to traffic
on July 1, 1940, and
dramatically collapsed into
Puget Sound on November 7
the same year.
 Aircraft Failures
Landing Gear Wing Failure

Bird Hit

Gas Turbine
 Rail Failures
Derailment

Axle Failure

Wheel Failure
Rail Failure
 Automobile Vibration & Failures
Warped Brake Rotor Suspension Failure

Coupling Failure Wheel & Hub Failure

 Failure of a 10 MW TG set
Specifications of set
Turbine is of Bellis make
10 MW /7000 rpm with extraction Turbine
Critical speed 9710 rpm and trip speed 7700 rpm
Couplings are of membrane type
Gear box is of Walchandnagar GN70s 7000/1500 rpm
Generator is BHEL Bhopal make
The set was not connected to grid. Heavy pitting marks and complete
absence of blades in all wheels of Turbine

Failure Information
The set got burntout at 12.30 Pm on 13/4/07
Exciter was thrown out quite long distance.
High speed coupling hub flown out of roof and found
about 700 Meters .
There were no vibrations noticed before failure and no
abnormal operational behavior noticed last few days and
at the time of failure.
Shear pins in low speed couplings are not sheared off.
The Seals got damaged and rotor rubbed
Smoke observed at exciter before the exciter got released with casing. Absence of blades show that
the rotor had over-speeded
 Shearing off coupling hub on
First stage Curtis wheel had turbine Location
some blades in broken condition

Upper part of the casing

showing heavy rubbing of
seals with the rotor

Turbine shaft after catastrophe

Coupling Damage
Shaft Crack at
Thrust bearing
location

Gear Box Damage Damage

Analysis
 Torsional natural frequencies were very close to the operating
speeds, where due to gradual resonance, torque amplification took
place and the system got damaged.
To summarise

Need to study Vibrations to –

• Design for Dynamics and Stability

• Understanding of Machine Behavior
• Failures can be catastrophic and expensive
• Downtime can be uneconomical
• Long Life
• Continuous Condition Monitoring
• Diagnostics and Prognostics
 Types of Vibrations
• Free vibration occurs when a mechanical system is set in motion with an
initial input and allowed to vibrate freely.
– Examples of this type of vibration are pulling a child back on a swing and letting
it go, or hitting a tuning fork and letting it ring.

The mechanical system vibrates at one or more of its natural frequencies and
damps down to motionlessness.

• Forced vibration is when a time-varying disturbance (load, displacement

or velocity) is applied to a mechanical system.
– The disturbance can be a periodic and steady-state input, a transient input, or a
random input.

– The periodic input can be a harmonic or a non-harmonic disturbance.

– Examples of these types of vibration include a washing machine shaking due to

an imbalance, transportation vibration caused by an engine or uneven road, or
the vibration of a building during an earthquake.

For linear systems, the frequency of the steady-state vibration response resulting
from the application of a periodic, harmonic input is equal to the frequency of the
applied force or motion, with the response magnitude being dependent on the
actual mechanical system.
 Mass–Spring–Damper models
• The fundamentals of vibration analysis can be understood by studying the simple
Mass-spring-damper model. Indeed, even a complex structure such as an automobile
body can be modeled as a "summation" of simple mass–spring–damper models.
• Vibration since concerns primarily two types of energy forms – Kinetic and Potential.
• Kinetic energy exists due to motion of particle/particles constituting the physical
system.
• We define an element mass m and say that the kinetic energy exists in the vibrating
system due to motion of this mass m.
• Potential energy exists due to displacement / deformation of the system from its mean
or optimum position. Energy gets stored in the material due to its deformation.
• We define another element spring. Deformation is related to flexibility of the material.
The more flexible the material is the more potential energy the system can store. The
element spring is flexible. It can deform to store energy.
• We attribute a property to the spring: Flexibility = Deformation / Force.

It is easier to mathematically handle

1 F o rc e
s tiffn e s s = = (N/m)
fle x ib ility D e fo rm a tio n
Example Consider an I.C. Engine mounted on a foundation. It is found to
oscillate violently in the vertical direction at a certain frequency ω.

We assume that the mass is absolutely rigid .i.e. it is not

flexible. We assume that the spring is massless i.e. all
mass of the system is contained in m only. All flexibility of
the system is represented by the spring only. The system
can be further reduced to
Mathematical Model

In the above model, we

analyse motion only in
x-direction.
What about the motion
in the y and z-
directions?
Physical System
A look at the system
reveals that it is so
Degrees of constrained that it can
Freedom have vibration
primarily in the x-
direction. The idealization is
6 DOFs that mass is
Vibrations it any in the constrained to move
y and z-directions (due in the x-direction
to looseness of bolts only.
etc.) would be 1 DOF
Anyrigid bodywould havenegligible.
sixdegreesof freedom A single coordinate
3for translation in the x , y , z directions. x, is sufficient to
3for rotation α, β, γabout the x , y , z axis. describe motion of
Another vibratory model can now be made. In this case the
equivalent inertia I of the crank and piston plays the same role as
mass in the previous case.

I
k

Since the flywheel inertia is very large it can be safely assumed

to be grounded.

The torsional stiffness k of the crankshaft can be determined

either by experiment or by strength of material formulae.
Considering the example of the simple pendulum - the bob continues its
periodic motion once distributed from its equilibrium position, unless there is
a way to dissipate the initial energy imparted to it.

In practice there is friction at the support, there is also air resistance. There
might be intermolecular friction in the vibrating element. Because of such
dissipation the initial vibration given to the system dies out after some time.

Mathematically such a dissipating agency can be

represented by an equivalent viscous dashpot

Consider a simple cylinder filled with some viscous medium

(say oil) in which a piston actuated with a velocity ẋ. The
resistive force to the cylinder movement from the oil is
proportional to the velocity of the piston.
i.e.
or 𝐹𝑑 = 𝑐𝑥ሶ { is called the damping coeff. ( / )

We would use such a dashpot to

represent the dissipating agency in a
mechanical system. k c
Mass, Spring and Dashpot constitute
the basic elements in vibration
Forced vibrations: Generated when the system is subjected to an
external disturbance. Slots
(nozzle
s)

Rotating bladed disc of turbine

The rotor and the stator are placed on a common axis Steam/Gas from the
nozzle falls on the blades and the bladed disc starts rotating due to the
turning moment generated (the blade cross-section being aerofoil).
Another phenomenon may take place. When a blade comes in front of a
nozzle it may experience a bending force in the axial direction.
As the blade rotates away from a nozzle the magnitude of the bending force
recedes till the blade stars coming to the next nozzle.
When the bending force on the blade again starts increasing in magnitude
due to the Steam/Gas from the next nozzle, reaches a maximum and the
pattern keeps repeating.
Hence the blade experiences a
= no. of nozzles
periodic force with
n =frequency
w
w = rotational frequency

(n )
Can be further
idealised as
A periodic function of frequency ν rad/sec can be written as a summation of an infinite
trigonometric series.
¥
(n ) = 0
+ å( cos n + sin n ) 2
2 m m where = ò (n )cos n
m =1
0
2
Zeroth harmonic comp.
th
m harmonic comp. = ò (n )sin n
0
(static bending force)
e.g., for m = 3
0
(n ) = + 1 cosn + 1 sin n + 2 cos 2n + 2 sin 2n + 3 cos3n + 3 sin 3n
2
 Example
• A rotating stage of blades in turbo-machines is preceded by a stage of stationary guide vanes, which
will contain a number of nozzles.
• Each time a rotating blade happens to be in front of the nozzle it receives a pressure pulse. If the
nozzles are symmetrically places as shown in the figure, then the frequency of these pulses would be
nƒ, where n is the number of nozzles and ƒ the speed of rotation in revolutions per second.
• Representing the force variation over the blade by an approximate rectangular pulse of height P and
duration 30º of rotation.
• Determine the Fourier components when the three nozzles are symmetrically placed.

1
Nown =2 f (n) =2nf =6f rad/sec( n =3) 1=
T t2 8
1 2 2 sec
T= andam = òP cos mnt dt= òP cos m(6f )tdt s
3f T 0 1/ 3 f 5
t1
2 =
24
a 0 = P / 2 , a 1 = - 0.45P, a 2 =0.32P , a 3 = -0.15P , a 4 =0.0
What happens when the
b 1 = 0, b 2 =0 , b 3 =0 , b 4 =0.0
third nozzle gets