The Effect of Sensor Location on the Forced Response Characteristics of Rotors With Active Magnetic Bearings

This paper presents a modification of existing transfer matrix methods for rotor analysis, to predict the response of rotor systems with active magnetic bearings. The position of the magnetic bearing sensors is taken into account and the effect of changing sensor position on the vibrational characteristics of rotor systems is studied. The results for a simple two-mass rotor system are presented as plots of critical frequency vs. sensor position and amplitude at critical frequency vs. sensor position. A typical eight stage centrifugal compressor rotor is analyzed using the modified transfer matrix code and the results are presented as plots of amplitude vs frequency for different cases of sensor location.