Numerical Studies on Time-Varying Stiffness of Disk-Drum Type Rotor with Bolt Loosening

Disk-drum type rotors are widely used in industry for their high stiffness and low weight properties. In disk-drum type rotors, the adjacent disks and drums are commonly connected by bolted joints. Those rotating joint interfaces are subjected to numerous combinations of loads during normal operation, where loosening of the connecting bolts might occur. The bolt loosening will change the local stiffness of the rotor, which in turn affect the rotor dynamics and even result in structural failures. In this paper, the local stiffness of a disk- drum rotor with bolt loosening is investigated numerically. A three-dimensional (3D) finite element (FE) model for the bolted disk-drum joint is established in ANSYS, where the bolt loosening is simulated by reducing the preloads of certain bolts, and removing those bolts as the limiting case. Simulations are performed on the FE model to evaluate the joint behaviour under static loads. Periodic variations of the joint deflections with respect to the rotation angle of the shaft are obtained, which implies the appearance of the time-varying local stiffness in the rotor system. The studies in this paper help accurate prediction of the rotor dynamics and early detection of bolt loosening.