Experimental investigation on the modal characteristics of rolling thick disk

Analytical and experimental investigations are carried out to study the combined effect of rotation and support nonuniformity on the modal characteristics of circular thick disks. A three-dimensional model is implemented to study the coupled in-plane and out-of-plane modes of a thick disk and present the variations of the travelling waves with respect to rotating and fixed coordinates. The initial stiffening due to rotation is introduced by developing a non-linear model that permits the coupling between static and dynamic problems. The present formulation is generalized to account for the stiffening effects for disks subject to non-uniform boundary conditions, where the initial displacement cannot be considered as axisymmetric. The general non-linear problem of a rotating annular disk subject to non-uniform boundary conditions is, then, investigated. The laboratory experiments on stationary and rotating circular disks under selected boundary conditions are carried out to demonstrate the validity of the analytical methods in terms of vibration and acoustic emission behaviour. The experimental results examine the combined effect of rotation and point support on the disk. The experimental study confirms the split in natural frequencies of the disk that was observed in the analytical results due to both rotation and support nonuniformity.