Coupled microvibration analysis of a reaction wheel assembly including gyroscopic effects in its accelerance

This article discusses the coupled microvibration analysis of a cantilever configured Reaction Wheel Assembly with soft-suspension system. A RWA–seismic mass coupled microvibration measurement system is presented and its model validated against test results. The importance of the RWA driving point accelerances in coupled microvibration analysis is thoroughly discussed. A RWA accelerance measurement system has been designed to measure the driving point accelerances in both static (flywheel not spinning) and dynamic (flywheel spinning) conditions. Analytically, RWA static accelerance is obtained by frequency response analysis of a finite element model. The traditionally ignored gyroscopic effects in the accelerances are included in the model and their effects with respect to traditional models are shown both theoretically and experimentally. Although at high angular speed, when nonlinearities in the microvibrations prevent an accurate simulation, it is shown that the predicted microvibrations match more closely with the test results when considering gyroscopic effects in RWA accelerances than those predicted using the traditional method. The presented coupled microvibration analysis method is also very efficient in practice and is applicable in an industrial environment.