Benchmark of the rotordynamics capabilities of the most prominent finite element method software

Aim of this paper is to analyze the performance of the most important solvers for finite element method analyses with particular interest to rotordynamics. In order to benchmark their performance in their capability of modelling the effects of gyroscopic moments, the formulation of the gyroscopic damping matrix will be analyzed for both beam and solid elements. Then two reference models will be described for simple rotor geometries that include gyroscopic effects. Then the same rotor geometries will be built in the different software using both beam and solid elements. The obtained Campbell's diagrams will be compared to each other and to the reference models and the conclusions will be drawn.