SECONDARY INERTIA EFFECTS IN THE TORSIONAL VIBRATION OF RECIPROCATING-ENGINES - A LITERATURE-REVIEW

It has been known for some time that the torsional vibration of recipr ocating engines and pumps cannot be modelled accurately by representin g the reciprocating mechanism by a constant inertia. There have been m any publications describing better models than those that use constant inertia and these indicate that the effective inertia of a reciprocat ing mechanism varies with angular position. The major component of thi s variation is a twice per revolution cyclic effect-hence the term 'se condary inertia'. The consequences of this secondary inertia effect ca n be serious for torsional vibration causing Secondary resonance' and even instability. This paper contains a review of the current literatu re on the subject and introduces some recent work by the authors.