Automatic balancing of flexible vertical rotors using a guided ball (Q1960788)

The authors consider the automatic balancing of flexible vertical rotors using a ball that moves freely in a circular groove in the rotor disk. The effectiveness of automatic balancing for a single-disk vertical rotor is investigated on the example of an undamped three-degree-of-freedom model in the rotating reference frame. The balancing-ball inertia changes the rotor dynamics and lowers the critical angular speed of the rotor. When the rotor speed is higher than this critical speed, the automatic balancer can neutralize the unbalanced whirling motion of the rotor. Finally, the authors present a plot that shows stability boundaries.