Critical speed of the shaft

▲Critical speed of a rotating shaft the speed where it becomes dynamically unstable.
▲ The frequency of free vibration of a non-rotating shaft is the same as its critical speed.
▲ The shaft, because of its own mass, has a critical speed. The ensemble of attachments to a
shaft likewise has a critical speed that is much lower than the shaft’s intrinsic critical speed.
For a shaft of uniform diameter, simply
supported, critical speed of the shaft will be:

m = the mass per unit length,

where A = cross-sectional area, and
γ = the specific weight.

For an ensemble of attachments, Rayleigh’s

method for lumped masses gives:
where Wi = the weight of rotating bodies
yi = deflection of rotating bodies
 Critical speed of the shaft
To counter the computation difficulty, as much as the shaft is elastic, we can use influence coefficients.
An influence coefficient is the transverse deflection at location i on a shaft due to a unit load at
location j on the shaft.

For a simply supported beam with a

single unit load, the influence
coefficients:
where
δij = influence coefficients

For three loads the influence

coefficients may be displayed as:

Maxwell’s reciprocity theorem states that: δij = δji

 Critical speed of the shaft
the deflections of the three points y1, y2, and y3

where
Fi = the weighs attached wi or
the centrifugal forces miω2yi
 Critical speed of the shaft
To avoid the trivial solution y1 = y2 = y3 = 0, the determinant of the
coefficients of y1, y2, and y3 must be zero (eigenvalue problem)

deflection other than zero exists only at three

distinct values of ω, the critical speeds.

Expanding the determinant

The three roots of eq. can be expressed as 1/ω12 , 1/ω22 , and 1/ω32 and can be written in the
form:
 Critical speed of the shaft

Comparing the above equations:

If we had only a single mass m1 alone, the critical speed would be given by:

Similarly for masses m2 and m3 :

 Critical speed of the shaft

If we order the critical speeds such that ω1 < ω2 < ω3, then 1/ω12 ≫ 1/ω22 , and 1/ω32

For n body shaft :

Dunkerley’s equation
 Critical speed of the shaft
No loads appearing in the Dunkerley’s equation, it follows that if each load could be
placed at some convenient location transformed into an equivalent load, then the critical
speed of an array of loads could be found by summing the equivalent loads, all placed at
a single convenient location. For the load at station 1, placed at the center of span,
denoted with the subscript c, the equivalent load is found from: