Bifurcations and hysteresis of varying compliance vibrations in the primary parametric resonance for a ball bearing

This paper investigates the bifurcation and resonant hysteresis of varying compliance (VC) vibrations in a rigid-rotor ball bearing system with Hertzian contact and radial internal bearing clearance. With the aid of arc-length continuation, the harmonic balance and alternating frequency time (HB-AFT) technique is employed to trace the branches of periodic responses, for which the stability is also investigated using Floquet theory. It is found that the soft resonant hysteresis resulted from the Hertzian contact resonance dominates the primary parametric resonance. In addition, this paper also demonstrates that the mechanism of the period doubling in the case of small bearing clearances is arisen from one to two parametrical internal resonance in the primary resonant area, which can lead nonlinear responses such as quasi-period and chaotic motions to the system, and the evolvements of these complex behaviors are also explored.