Abstract
In this paper, a dynamic model for the rotor shaft-coupling-blade system was developed. The blades are attached to a disk and driven by an electric motor shaft which is flexible in torsion. We assumed that the shaft torsional flexibility was lumped in the flexible coupling which is usually adopted in rotor systems. The Lagrangian approach with the small deformation theory for both blade-bending and shaft-torsional deformations was employed for developing the equation of the motion. The Assumed Modes Method was used for estimating the blade transverse deflection. The numerical results highlight the effects of both structural damping of the system and the torsional stiffness of the flexible coupling to the dynamic response of the blade. The results showed strong coupling between the blade bending and shaft torsional vibrations in the form of inertial nonlinearity, stiffness hardening and softening.