Efficient dynamic analysis of a whole aeroengine using identified nonlinear bearing models

Essential to effective aeroengine design is the rapid simulation of the dynamic performance of a variety of engine and non-linear squeeze-film damper (SFD) bearing configurations. Using recently introduced non-linear solvers combined with non-parametric identification of high-accuracy bearing models it is possible to run full-engine rotordynamic simulations, in both the time and frequency domains, at a fraction of the previous computational cost. Using a novel reduced form of Chebyshev polynomial fits, efficient and accurate identification of the numerical solution to the two-dimensional Reynolds equation (RE) is achieved. The engine analysed is a twin-spool five-SFD engine model provided by a leading manufacturer. Whole-engine simulations obtained using Chebyshev-identified bearing models of the finite difference (FD) solution to the RE are compared with those obtained from the original FD bearing models. For both time and frequency domain analysis, the Chebyshev-identified bearing models are shown to mimic accurately and consistently the simulations obtained from the FD models in under 10 per cent of the computational time. An illustrative parameter study is performed to demonstrate the unparalleled capabilities of the combination of recently developed and novel techniques utilised in this paper.