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Simple Rotor Analysis Through Tutorial Problems 1st
Edition Rajiv Tiwari Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Rajiv Tiwari
ISBN(s): 9781032555560, 1032555564
Edition: 1
File Details: PDF, 23.54 MB
Year: 2023
Language: english
 Simple Rotor Analysis through
Tutorial Problems
This book discusses various rotor systems, rotor dynamics and dynamics of rotating machinery
problems through tutorials. Most of the covered problems can be derived and solved using hand
calculations for deeper understanding of the subject. It correlates the examples provided in this
book with real machinery where it can be used, and readers can analyse their own simple rotor
system based on the variety of examples presented. All problems are supplemented by independent
MATLAB® codes for exploring the subject with more ease with graphical outputs.

Features:
• Rotordynamics terminology and phenomena are introduced with very simple rotor-bearing
models.
• In-depth analytical dynamic analysis of rotors mounted in flexible bearings and the effect
of gyroscopic effects in simple rotor systems are covered.
• Offers the possibility for the reader to reproduce the results and see how the equations are
derived and solved in rotor dynamics.
• A few examples of simple rotor-bearing-coupling systems, rotor-bearing-foundation sys-
tems, and two-spool rotors are covered.
• Directions are provided to extend the present exercise problems and their solutions.
• Examples are supplemented by MATLAB® codes with detailed solution steps.
• Includes multiple-choice questions and their solutions.

This book is aimed at senior undergraduate/graduate students in mechanical engineering, as well as

scientists and practice engineers from the field of rotordynamics, rotating machinery/turbomachin-
ery and aerospace engineering.
Simple Rotor Analysis through
Tutorial Problems

Rajiv Tiwari
MATLAB ® is a trademark of The MathWorks, Inc. and is used with permission. The MathWorks does not warrant the
accuracy of the text or exercises in this book. This book’s use or discussion of MATLAB ® software or related products
does not constitute endorsement or sponsorship by The MathWorks of a particular pedagogical approach or particular
use of the MATLAB ® software.

Designed cover image: © Rajiv Tiwari

First edition published 2024

by CRC Press
2385 NW Executive Center Drive, Suite 320, Boca Raton FL 33431

and by CRC Press

4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

CRC Press is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

© 2024 Rajiv Tiwari

Reasonable efforts have been made to publish reliable data and information, but the author and publisher cannot
assume responsibility for the validity of all materials or the consequences of their use. The authors and publishers
have attempted to trace the copyright holders of all material reproduced in this publication and apologize to
copyright holders if permission to publish in this form has not been obtained. If any copyright material has not been
acknowledged please write and let us know so we may rectify in any future reprint.

Except as permitted under U.S. Copyright Law, no part of this book may be reprinted, reproduced, transmitted, or
utilized in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without written
permission from the publishers.

For permission to photocopy or use material electronically from this work, access www.copyright.com or contact the
Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. (CCC), 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, 978-750-8400. For works that are
not available on CCC please contact [email protected]

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are used only for
identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

ISBN: 978-1-032-55556-0 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-032-63820-1 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-63821-8 (ebk)

DOI: 10.1201/9781032638218

Typeset in Times
by codeMantra
Contents
Preface..............................................................................................................................................vii
About the Author...............................................................................................................................ix
Introduction........................................................................................................................................xi

Chapter 1 A Brief History of Rotor Systems and Basic Terminologies........................................1

Chapter 2 Transverse Vibrations of Simple Rotor Systems......................................................... 11
Chapter 3 Rotordynamic Parameters of Bearings....................................................................... 65
Chapter 4 Transverse Vibrations of Simple Rotor-Bearing-Foundation Systems........................ 91
Chapter 5 Transverse Vibrations of Simple Rotor Systems with Gyroscopic Effects............... 178

Index............................................................................................................................................... 267

v
Preface
This tutorial book is of its first kind in the field of rotor system, rotor dynamics, or the dynamics
of rotating machinery. Hardly any tutorial book is available on this topic, so definitely students,
researchers and practice engineers, who are new in this field, will welcome this introductory book
very well. An attempt is made to correlate examples provided in this book with real machinery,
where it has an application. Readers can analyse their own simple rotor system based on a variety
of examples presented in this book. Also, every chapter is supplemented with a large amount of
multiple-choice questions (MCQs) and their descriptions, so that basic concepts can also be clarified
in a capsule form.
The basic idea of writing this book in the form of solution to various exercise problems is that
certain problem-solving skills cannot be described in a textbook in a detailed manner. Especially in
the rotor system, a lot of concepts can be understood when a variety of different cases are attempted
numerically. In this, the approach is not only to reach the end of solution but to try to discuss
and have the possibility of exploring more concepts and methods during the process of solving it.
Moreover, almost all problems are supplemented by MATLAB codes for exploring the subject with
more ease with graphical outputs whenever it is necessary (Additional resources can be found for
this publication at: https://www.routledge.com/authors/i16997-rajiv-tiwari). As a cautionary note,
these computer codes are not general codes. These help to avoid tedious calculations and to under-
stand step-by-step calculations more easily. Especially, if readers want to try out different numerical
inputs of rotor configuration, then it is quite a time-saving exercise without such codes.
In this book, detailed steps are provided so that concepts can be understood more easily.
Exploring more on the exercise problems through MATLAB codes so that one should not get stuck
in the calculation of numbers. Graphical as well as detailed output of each step help in checking
and comprehending the overall procedure. Throughout this book, it is ensured to make a point to
the reader to give some hints in which direction they can explore more on a given exercise problem,
and it broadens the thinking of reader so that they themselves can formulate new exercise problems
and explore them with an understanding of the exercises presented herein. Wherever needed, the
problem has been attempted with a fundamental approach, and the necessary background is covered
so that reader should not feel gaps in grasping the concepts. However, a detailed and comprehensive
coverage of related theory is given in my previous book Rotor System: Analysis and Identification
by CRC Press, Boca Raton, USA, 2017.
Rotor systems have a lot of practical applications in all fields of industries. Rotor system ­theories
have evolved through solving practical problems using simple mathematical models of various
kinds of rotor systems. This tutorial book covers simple aspects of rotor systems, especially for
­linear analysis. This book begins with historical background and basic terminologies in rotor-
bearing systems in Chapter 1 and then analysis of very simple rotor systems in Chapter 2 for the
transverse vibration. Chapter 3 covers rolling element bearings (with some advanced analysis) and
hydrodynamic bearings to have a theoretical calculation of stiffness and damping for rotordynamic
­analyses. Chapter 4 covers simple rigid/flexible long rotor mounted on flexible bearings/foundations
to obtain critical speeds. The most important aspect of the gyroscopic effect on simple rotor systems
is analysed in Chapter 5 using both quasi-static and dynamic approaches. Overall, this book con-
tains around 110 Exercise Problems (a few of them descriptive) and 150 MCQs.
The author would like to acknowledge the contribution of various undergraduate, graduate and
research scholar at IIT Guwahati who undertook this particular course on rotor dynamics dur-
ing the past two and half decades. My heartfelt thanks to the help offered by the graduate stu-
dents (notably Mr. Aakash Dewangan, Mr Shashikant K. Verma, Mr Thashreef A., Ms. Twinkle
Mandawat, Ms. Beni J. Doley, Mr Manpreet Singh and Mr. Aditya S. Gangan), research scholars
(Dr Gyan Ranjan, Mr Pantha Pratim Das, Mr Atul K Gautam, Dr Siva SrinivasR, Dr Nilakshi

vii
viii Preface

Sarmah, Dr Prabhat Kumar and Dr D. Gayen) and the faculty at IIT Guwahati. I thank my
gurus (Prof. (Late) J. S. Rao, Prof. K. Gupta, Prof. N. S. Vyas, Prof. M. I. Friswell, Prof. A. W.
Lees, Dr. Arun Kumar and Prof. R. Markert) who introduced me to this subject and aspire me
to excel in this field). I also acknowledge faculties (Prof. Jyoti K Sinha, Prof. Hassan Ouakad,
Prof. Athanasios Chasalevris, Prof. F. Dohnal and Prof. Raghu Echempati), researchers and
practice engineers (Dr. Soumendu Jana and Mr San Rajendra) who approached me for their
own issues related to this topic or interacted with them during conferences, and that gave me a
broader perspective of the subject, which is reflected in this book during the illustration of v­ arious
examples. The difficult period of lock-down, during COVID-19 pandemic, forced me to com-
plete this book early. I thank the publishing house (Dr. Gagandeep Singh, Senior Publisher, and
Ms. Aditi Mittal, Editorial Assistant, (she/her) of CRC Press, Taylor and Francis Books India Pvt.
Ltd.; Aimée Crickmore (she/her), Production Editor from Taylor & Francis, UK and Sathya Devi
(she/her), Production Manager from CodeMantra, India) and its very efficient members for bringing
out this book in a very short time and improving the overall quality of this book through rigorous
editing. Finally, I thank my family members – my wife Vibha, son Antariksh and daughter Rimjhim
– for their patience and supportive nature.

R. Tiwari
About the Author
Dr. Rajiv Tiwari was born in 1967 at Raipur, Madhya Pradesh,
India. He graduated with a BE in 1988 (Mechanical Engineering)
from Government College Engineering and Technology, Raipur,
under Pt. Ravishankar University, Raipur, an M. Tech. (Mechanical
Engineering) in 1991 and a PhD (Mechanical Engineering) in
1997 from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur, India.
He started his career as a lecturer in 1996 at Regional
Engineering College, Hamirpur (Himachal Pradesh), India, and
worked there for 1 year. In 1997, he joined the Indian Institute of
Technology Guwahati, as an assistant professor in the Department
of Mechanical Engineering. He worked as a research officer at
the University of Wales, Swansea, UK, for 1 year in 2001 on
deputation. He was elevated to associate professor in 2002 and
to Professor in 2007 at IIT Guwahati. He was the head of the
Center of Educational Technology and Institute Coordinator of
the National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) during 2005–2009, and the
National Coordinator of the Quality Improvement Programme (QIP) for engineering college teach-
ers during 2003–2009. He also visited the University of Darmstadt, Germany, under DAAD fellow-
ship during May–July 2011.
He has been deeply involved in various research areas of rotordynamics, especially identifying
mechanical system parameters (e.g. bearings, seals, gears and rotor crack dynamic parameters), diag-
nosing the faults of machine components (e.g. bearings, couplings, gearbox, pumps and induction
motors) and applying active magnetic bearings to monitoring the condition of rotating machinery.
His research areas also include rolling element bearing design and analysis for high-speed applica-
tions. He has completed three projects for the Aeronautical Research & Development Board (ARDB),
India, on these topics. He has been offering consulting services for the last several years to Indian
industries, like the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Trivendrum; Combat Vehicle
R&D Establishment (CVRDE), Chennai; Gas Turbine Research Establishment (GTRE) Bangalore,
National Bearings Company Ltd. (NBC) Jaipur, and Tata Bearings, Kharagpur, as well as other
local industries in the northeast of India. One of the European power industries, Skoda Power, Czech
Republic, has also consulted him on seal dynamic parameter estimates for steam turbine applica-
tions. Dr. Tiwari has authored more than 250 journal and conference papers. He has guided 57 M.
Tech. students, and 17 PhD students and 7 more are currently pursuing research projects.
He has successfully initiated and organised a national-level symposium on rotor dynamics (NSRD-
2003), four short-term courses on rotor dynamics (2004, 2005, 2008 and 2015) and a national work-
shop on “Use and Deployment of Web and Video Courses for Enriching Engineering Education”
(2007) at IIT Guwahati, India. He has jointly organised an International Conference on Vibration
Problems ICOVP 2015 at IIT Guwahati, Vibration Engineering and Technology of Machinery
(VETOMAC-2021) jointly with BMS College of Engineering, Bengaluru, VETOMAC-2022 with
Tribhuvan University, Nepal and VETOMAC-2023 with Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee.
He has developed two web- and video-based freely available online courses under NPTEL: (1)
Mechanical Vibration and (2) Rotor Dynamics, and under MHRD-sponsored virtual lab on the
“Mechanical Vibration Virtual Lab.” He has authored a textbook on Rotor Systems: Analysis and
Identification from Taylor & Francis Group, CRC Press, USA, 2017. For consecutively last 3 years

ix
x About the Author

(2020 through 2023), Prof. Tiwari has been featured among World’s Top 2% Scientists List cre-
ated by Stanford University. He has recently joined as Associate Editor to the Journal of Vibration
and Control (JVC), Sage Publications, and Journal of Vibration Engineering and Technology
(JVET), Springer. Nature Publications. Also, now he is in Worldwide Technical Committee on
Rotor Dynamics of International Federation of Machines and Mechanisms (IFToMM). Recently, he
has been included in The Bearings Sectional Committee, PGD 13, of Bureau of Indian Standards
(BIS), which is responsible for the development of the national and international standards on the
‘Magnetic Bearings’, 'Aerospace Bearings' and 'Railway Bearings’.
Introduction
Rotor systems are known for high-power density with minimum vibrational energy, which makes
them quieter as compared to reciprocating machines. Hence, as compared to reciprocating machines,
the rotating machines are preferred for high-speed applications. The application of rotating machin-
ery can be found in a variety of places, such as engines, turbines, generators, pumps, compressors,
machine tools, dredgers, reaction flywheels, energy storage flywheels, mobiles, etc.
The reciprocating engines are preferred since they have internal combustion as compared to
turbines, which have external combustion. The reciprocating pumps have applications for high-
pressure generation, while centrifugal pumps have applications where high volumes need to be
pumped. Apart from these in transmission systems, the rotating machinery has advantages, which
involve shafts, bearings, couplings, gears, seals, flywheels, etc.
Due to the dynamic nature of the rotor systems apart from the static design, the dynamic design
is also very important, especially with respect to critical speeds and instability conditions. The vast
majority of the analysis involves finding the natural frequencies of the rotor system in the trans-
verse, axial and torsional vibrations. Sources of instabilities in rotor systems are several, and the
most common source is fluid-film bearings. Apart from this, the instability comes from seals, shaft
asymmetry, rotor asymmetry, shaft material damping, bearing cage instability, etc. To perform such
analysis, the rotor systems need to be modelled. As compared to the structural vibration, the rotor
system differs due to gyroscopic effects, which makes the rotor whirl in the same direction as the
spin speed of the rotor (i.e., forward whirl) and in the opposite direction (i.e., the backward whirl),
along with associated whirl natural frequencies and critical speeds. The scope of this book is lim-
ited to simple rotor analysis for its dynamics.

xi
 1 A Brief History of Rotor Systems
and Basic Terminologies
Exercise 1.1 Who was the famous person in 1869 who first analysed the rotor dynamics problem
but wrongly predicted that it is impossible to operate industrial rotors at very high speeds?
Solution: He was a famous Scottish mechanical engineer William John Macquorn Rankine (5 July
1820–24 December 1872). He predicted critical speed correctly by equating elastic force kx to
centrifugal force mrω 2 of a whirl mass, m, attached by a spring, k, at a radius of r. The condition
that these two forces are equal gives the critical speed condition ω2 = k/m. Since centrifugal force is
proportional to the square of spin speed so he concluded that response will grow (unbounded) after
critical speed. However, considering centrifugal force or Coriolis force as real force, it gives errone-
ous results (Meriam and Kraige, 2013) and he predicted instability above ­critical speed (supercriti-
cal speeds). Detailed discussion can be found in Vance et al. (2010) and Tiwari (2017).

Exercise 1.2 Who was the first engineer who experimentally demonstrated and reported that it was
possible to rotate the rotor safely at very high speeds?
Solution: Gustaf de Laval, a Swedish engineer, ran a steam turbine to supercritical speeds in 1889
in a stable condition. However, this critical speed invension was contrary to Rankine’s prediction,
i.e. unstable regimes at supercritical speeds.

Exercise 1.3 Who clarified theoretically the confusion of whether it is possible to rotate the rotor
safely above critical speeds?
Solution: Jeffcott (1919) developed a simple rotor model to clarify that it is possible to rotate the
rotor safely above critical speeds. In honour of his name, the rotor model is now called as Jeffcott
rotor model. Herein, he first published a clear understanding of rotor behaviour due to unbalance
in the presence of damping using a mathematical model. The model consists of a massless flexible
shaft simply supported at ends, and a rigid disc is mounted at its mid-span (Figure 1.1). Variant of
Jeffcott rotor model in various ways has been extensively used by many researchers to understand
several rotordynamic phenomena, and it is still being used for newer investigations. Already, more
than 100 years have passed since the publication of this classical paper.

Exercise 1.4 Who were the first to use the terms the whirling motion and the critical speed?
Solution: Rankine first used the term whirling motion (refer Figure 1.2) and Dunkerley used the
term critical speed. Dunkerley (1894) showed that the critical speed of a rotating simply supported
shaft and its natural frequency of transverse vibration are same. Relations of two different motions

FIGURE 1.1 A simply-supported (Jeffcott) rotor system.

DOI: 10.1201/9781032638218-11
2 Simple Rotor Analysis through Tutorial Problems

FIGURE 1.2 Whirling and spinning motion of a rotor system.

were provided, i.e. the former as orbital motion and the latter as oscillatory motion. He clarified that
any unbalance would give force, which will excite natural frequency to give resonance condition of
critical speeds, a synchronous whirl condition.

Exercise 1.5 Define the natural frequency and the critical speed of a rotor system.
Solution: The natural frequency is a system property and depends upon the system stiffness and
the mass distribution. When a dynamic system is given perturbation, it oscillates with a frequency
equal to its natural frequency. Rotors can have the longitudinal (axial), transverse (bending) and/or
torsional natural frequencies depending on the application in which they are used and their associ-
ated inertia and stiffness distribution.
In a rotor, due to unbalance, it gets a force called centrifugal force with an excitation frequency
equal to its spin speed. When the spin speed coincides with the natural frequency of the system, it
is called the critical speed (refer Figure 1.3). It is a resonance condition. In general, a rotor can have
longitudinal (axial), transverse (bending) and torsional critical speeds.

Exercise 1.6 How many transverse critical speeds would there be for a two-disc (point masses),
massless-flexible shaft rotor system?
Solution: There will be two transverse critical speeds for a two-disc (point masses) massless-flex-
ible shaft rotor system. It will have two degrees of freedom (DOFs) corresponding to transverse

FIGURE 1.3 Plot of rotor amplitude with spin speed showing critical speed corresponding to peak amplitude.
A Brief History of Rotor Systems and Basic Terminologies 3

FIGURE 1.4 Variation of amplitude and phase with spin speed of the shaft showing (a) two critical speeds
and (b) associated phase changes.

translational motion. If the discs are thin discs, then they will have four critical speeds since they
will have diametral mass moments of inertia and will have four DOFs corresponding to transverse
translational and rotational motions. A typical Bode plot showing two critical speeds is shown in
Figure 1.4. At critical speeds, the phase change of order of π rad can be seen.

Exercise 1.7 Is natural frequency dependent on the spin speed of the rotor? If yes, then under what
conditions?
Solution: If we consider the gyroscopic effect, then the natural frequency of the rotor will depend
upon the spin speed. Apart from this, often bearing dynamic parameters are speed-dependent (e.g.
the hydrodynamic bearings) and that makes natural frequency dependent on the rotor spin speed.

Exercise 1.8 What is the most common cause of a synchronous motion in a rotor system?
Solution: In the synchronous motion of the shaft, the orbital speed and its own spin speed are
equal. The sense of rotation of the shaft spin and the whirling are also the same. The unbalanced
force, in general, leads to synchronous whirl condition. Such force gives basically a forced response.
Under this motion, the shaft will not have flexural vibration but whirls as a rigid body about the
bearing axis.

Exercise 1.9 In a synchronous whirl of a rotor, what is the whirl frequency?

Solution: The spin speed of the rotor will be the whirl frequency for an unbalanced rotor system,
which leads to the synchronous whirl. For a balanced rotor, this condition will be achieved only at
critical speed. In general, a rotor has asynchronous whirl (spin speed and whirl frequency are not
the same), especially when the gyroscopic effect is present in the system.
4 Simple Rotor Analysis through Tutorial Problems

Exercise 1.10 For a perfectly balanced rotor rotating at a speed, what is the frequency of whirl
when it is perturbed from its equilibrium?
Solution: Since no external force is present hence it will whirl (vibrate) at its natural frequency.

Exercise 1.11 In a general motion of a rotor, what is the whirl frequency?

Solution: The asynchronous whirl motion occurs in the perfectly balanced rotor when it is per-
turbed. And due to this, it will have the whirl frequency as one of the natural frequencies of the rotor
system and that may not be equal to the spin speed of the shaft.

Exercise 1.12 Do bearings and foundations have any effect on the critical speed of a rotor system?
Solution: Bearings give stiffness and damping to the rotor system, and foundations give mass,
stiffness and damping to the rotor system. So, yes, they affect the critical speed of a rotor system.
We will see them in Chapter 4 through some simple examples.

Exercise 1.13 What is the internal and external damping in a rotor system?
Solution: If the energy dissipation is due to the external interactions of the system like viscosity
and from drag then it is called the external damping. The direction of external damping does not
change with the rotor speed.
If the energy dissipation is due to the internal interactions of the rotor system, like internal fric-
tion between the inter-molecular layers (or between disc and shaft interface or shaft crack faces rub-
bing together) as a result of differential straining, then it is called the internal damping (or material
(hysteretic) damping). The direction of internal damping does change with the rotor speed, and this
may lead to instability in the system.

Exercise 1.14 How do you distinguish between rigid and flexible rotors?
Solution: When the rotor rotates much below its first critical speed, it is considered a rigid rotor.
But when it rotates near or above its first critical speed, it is considered as the flexible rotor. Near
or above critical speed, flexible mode of vibration of rotor shafts are present and that has the effect
of changing unbalanced force distribution in the rotor system. Due to this the balancing of the rigid
and flexible rotors are quite different. In a rigid rotor case for dynamic balancing, only two balanc-
ing planes are sufficient, but in the case of a flexible rotor, it requires more than two balancing
planes, depending on the speed of operation.

Exercise 1.15 Is there any difference between rigid and flexible rotor dynamic balancing?
Solution: In general, two-plane balancing is used in the case of rigid rotors, and (N + 2) balancing
planes are used in the case of flexible rotor system, where N is the number of natural modes that
we want to balance. As mentioned in the answer to Exercise 1.14, the balancing force changes with
vibration mode of rotor, so rigid and flexible rotor balancing have differences.

Exercise 1.16 What is a Campbell diagram?

Solution: Due to various reasons, the whirl frequency of a rotor system changes with speed. For
example, due to the gyroscopic effect or speed-dependent bearing dynamic parameters.
A Campbell diagram (refer Figure 1.5) represents the variation of the whirl frequency of a rotor
system with its spin speed. It is used to locate the critical speed of the system. Also, often it is used
to depict the instability regions in linear rotor systems due to negative damping or positive logarith-
mic decrement.
A Brief History of Rotor Systems and Basic Terminologies 5

Exercise 1.17 Explain the inertia asymmetry and shaft asymmetry in a rotor system. What are the
effects of these asymmetries on rotor behaviour?
Solution: When inertias of rotor system in two principal radial directions are different (e.g., bladed
disc), then it is called inertia asymmetry. Whereas, when the stiffness of the shaft system in two
principal radial directions is different (e.g., non-circular shaft), it is called stiffness asymmetry.
Both asymmetries give time-dependent system parameters and that leads to parametrically excited
rotor systems. Such systems are prone to instability.

Exercise 1.18 What are the different active control mechanisms that can be applied in rotor systems?
Solution: In general, for suppressing excessive vibrations, dampers are used in rotor systems.
Electrorheological and magnetorheological fluids are often used for active control of rotor. Such
fluid damping properties can be changed by supplying appropriate electric or magnetic field in very
short time. Active magnetic bearings, which are non-contact type bearings, are being used to pro-
vide not only variable damping but stiffness based on feedback of rotor vibrations.

Exercise 1.19 Splitting of whirl natural frequencies occurs due to which factors in rotor systems?
Solution: Commonly due to gyroscopic effect the rotors have the forward and backward whirls
(refer Figure 1.5). Since the gyroscopic effect changes with the spin speed of the shaft, it is found
that the whirl frequency of the rotor systems has splitting behaviour; one increases with speed and
another decreases with speed. The one that increases is called the forward whirl, and the one that
decreases is called the backward whirl. Such behaviour can be seen when bearings have anisotropy
or rotor/shaft have asymmetry (either of inertia of rotor or stiffness of shaft), for example, a trans-
verse crack on the shaft surface.

FIGURE 1.5 A typical Campbell diagram for the rotor system showing variation of whirl natural frequency
with the spin speed of the shaft also showing critical speeds at intersection points (solid line: forward whirl,
dashed line: backward whirl).
6 Simple Rotor Analysis through Tutorial Problems

Exercise 1.20 Define the instability of a rotor system.

Solution: It is a free vibration phenomenon. When the rotor system vibrates even in the absence
of unbalanced effects (or any other external forces), it results in high levels of noise and component
stress and a corresponding reduced fatigue life. This is called instability. The dynamic instability
can be thought of as a negative damping in the system, wherein for every cycle of oscillations there
is an accumulation of energy. So system vibration amplitude increases continuously, but it requires
some source of energy from where the system will pump energy to the system, e.g. high-pressure
steam or working fluid, transmission of high power, etc. In linear systems, the magnitude of these
vibrations tends towards infinity, although in practice, shaft vibrations are often limited by the sys-
tem’s non-linearity. For more detailed treatment a book by Tiwari (2017) may be referred.

Exercise 1.21 What is Sommerfeld effect in transient rotor systems?

Solution: Rotor dynamic systems are often analysed with ideal drive assumption. However, all
drives are essentially non-ideal, i.e., they can only provide a limited amount of power. One basic
fact often ignored in rotor dynamics studies is that the drive dynamics has complex coupling with
the dynamics of the driven system. Increase in drive power input near resonance may contribute to
increasing the transverse vibrations rather than increasing the rotor spin, which is referred to as the
Sommerfeld effect.

Exercise 1.22 What is Morton’s effect?

Solution: Another phenomenon can occur in rotating machinery and give data similar to that
resulting from a light rub. Inspection of the machinery affected by this condition will show that
no rub is in fact occurring. Instead, it has been postulated that temperature gradients (“hot spots”)
occur on the shaft’s journal surface as the result of high viscous shear stress in the bearing lubri-
cant. Consequently, the shaft bows just as if a hot spot occurred from a rub, and a very similar
vibration response is observed. This mechanism was first described in a 1994 paper by Keogh
and Morton and has subsequently become known as the “Morton Effect.” It generally occurs only
under very specific conditions; in particular, on machines incorporating an overhung rotor design
and which are heavily loaded. So Morton effect is due to journal thermal gradients (Keogh and
Morton, 1994).

Exercise 1.23 What is the curve veering in the Campbell diagram? Why does it happen in rotor-
bearing systems?
Solution: Campbell diagram shows the whirl frequency variation with the spin speed of the rotor.
In general, these whirl frequency curves do not intersect. However, in special cases, these do appear
to intersect, but they swap the whirl frequency at the point of intersection (i.e., two modes form a
coupled system and the curves repel each other, avoiding an intersection). Mathematically, it is the
so-called curve veering in the eigenvalue problem.
Figure 1.6 shows a typical Campbell diagram with curve veering phenomenon, on which solid
lines are for forward whirl and dashed lines for backward whirl. At intersection point of two
­frequency curves, swapping of the forward and backward whirl can be seen.
A Brief History of Rotor Systems and Basic Terminologies 7

FIGURE 1.6 Campbell diagram showing curve veering phenomenon at intersection points of natural fre-
quency curves.

Exercise 1.24 Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs)

i. In a rotor system, the whirl natural frequency depends on the spin speed of the rotor due to
A. Gyroscopic couple only
B. Fluid-film bearing only
C. Both gyroscopic couple and fluid-film bearing
D. Whirl natural frequency does not depend on the spin speed of the rotor

ii. In a rotor system, the backward whirl refers to

A. sudden change of spin speed direction
B. when rotor spin speed and whirling motion have opposite sense of rotation
C. sudden reduction in spin speed value
D. when both rotor spin speed and whirling motion have reversal in sense of rotation

iii. In a rotor system, instability may occur due to

A. seals, bearings, shaft asymmetry, gyroscopic effect
B. bearings, shaft asymmetry, seals, rubs
C. rubs, bearings, gyroscopic effect, rotor asymmetry
D. gyroscopic effect, rotor asymmetry, internal damping, seals

iv. Rotors can have following types of vibration

A. Transverse and axial
B. Torsional and transverse
C. Axial and torsional
D. Transverse, axial and torsional
Other documents randomly have
different content
To the rude minds of the Teutonic peoples the logical system of
Aristotle had seemed almost a divine revelation. From the brilliant
intellect of Greece a hand was stretched to help them in the
arrangement of their religious beliefs. The Church accepted the aid
of logic, foreign though logic was to its natural bent, as eagerly as
the young society tried for a while to draw support from the ancient
forms of the Roman Empire. So with the advance of the Sciences in
modern times some hopeful spirits looked upon the Inductive Logic
of Mill in the light of a new revelation. The vigorous action of the
sciences hailed a systematic account of its methods almost as
eagerly as the strong, but untaught intellect of the barbarian world
welcomed the lessons of ancient philosophy. For the first time the
sciences, which had been working blindly or instinctively, but with
excellent success, found their procedure stated clearly and definitely,
yet without any attempt to reduce their varied life to the Procrustean
bed of mathematics, which had once been held to possess a
monopoly of method. The enormous influence of the physical
sciences saw itself reflected in a distinct logical outline: and the new
logic became the dominant philosophy. Such for a while was the
proud position of the Inductive Logic. Enthusiastic students of
science in all countries, who were not inaccessible to wider culture,
used quotations from Mill to adorn and authorise their attempts at
generalisation and theory. A period of speculation in the scientific
world succeeded the period of experiment, in which facts had been
collected and registered. A chapter on Method became a necessary
introduction to all higher scientific treatises. In our universities
methodology was prodigally applied to the study of ancient
philosophy. And so long as the scientific epoch lasts in its one-sided
prominence, so long the theory of inductive and experimental
methods may dominate the intellectual world.
But the Inductive Logic hardly rose to the due sense of its situation.
It has not held to the same high ideal as Bacon set before it. It has
planted itself beside what it was good enough to call the Deductive
Logic, and given the latter a certain toleration as a harmless lunatic,
or an old pauper who had seen better days. Retaining the latter with
certain modifications, although it has now lost its meaning in the
changed outlines of the intellectual world, Inductive Logic adds a
methodology of the sciences, without however founding this
methodology upon a comprehensive analysis of knowledge as a
whole, when enlarged and enlightened by the work of the sciences.
Hence the two portions,—the old logic, mutilated and severed from
the Greek world it grew out of, and the new Inductive or specially-
scientific logic, not going beyond a mere classification of methods,—
can never combine, any more than oil and water. And the little
psychology, which is sometimes added, does not facilitate the
harmony.
But Inductive Logic should have adopted a more thorough policy.
There can only be one Logic, which must be both inductive and
deductive, but exclusively, and in parts, neither. To achieve that task
however Logic must not turn its back indifferently on what it calls
metaphysics, and it must rise to a higher conception of the problems
of what it calls psychology.
In these circumstances the ordinary logic, in its fundamental terms,
is more on the level of popular thought, than in a strictly scientific
region, and does not attempt to unite the two regions, and examine
the fundamental basis of thought on which scientific methods rest.
The case of Concrete and Abstract will illustrate what has been said.
To popular thought the sense-world is concrete: the intellectual
world abstract. And so it is in the ordinary logic. To Hegel, on the
contrary, the intellectual interpretation of the world of reality and
experience is a truer and thus a more concrete description of it than
that contained in a series of sense-terms. Now the difference
between the two uses of the term is not a mere arbitrary change of
names. When the philosopher denies the concreteness of the sense-
world, and declares that it, as merely sensible, is only a mass of
excluding elements, a 'manifold,' and in the second instance a series
of abstractions, drawn out of this congeries by perception, the
change of language marks the total change of position between the
philosophic and the popular consciousness. Reality and concreteness
as estimated by the one line of thought are the very reverse of those
of the other. A mere sense-world to the philosopher is a world which
wants unity, which is made up of bits imperfectly adjusted to each
other, and always leading us to look for an explanation of them in
sources outside them. The single things we say we perceive,—the
here and the now we perceive them in—are found, upon reflection
and analysis, to depend upon general laws, on relations that go
beyond the single,—on what is neither here nor now, but
everywhere and timeless. The reality of the thing is found to imply a
general system of relations which make it what it is. Sense-
perception in short is the beginning of knowledge: and it begins by
taking up its task piecemeal. It rests upon a felt totality: and to raise
this to an intelligible totality, it must at first only isolate one attribute
at a time.
The apprehension of a thing from one side or aspect,—the
apprehension of one thing apart from its connexions,—the retention
of a term or formula apart from its context,—is what Hegel terms
'abstract.' Ordinary terms are essentially abstract. They spring from
the analysis of something which would, in the first stage of the
process, in strictness be described not as concrete, but as chaos:—
as the indefinite or 'manifold' of sensation. But the first conceptions,
which spring from this group when it is analysed, are abstract: they
are each severed from the continuity of their reality. To interpret our
feeling, our experience as felt, we must break it up. But the first face
that presents itself is apt to impress us unduly, and seems more real,
because nearer feeling: on the other it is more unreal, because less
adequate as a total expression of the felt unity. In the same sense
we call Political Economy an abstract science, because it looks upon
man as a money-making and money-distributing creature, and keeps
out of sight his other qualities. Our notions in this way are more
abstract or more concrete, according as our grasp of thought
extends to less or more of the relations which are necessarily pre-
supposed by them. On the other hand, when a term of thought
owns and emphasises its solidarity with others, when it is not
circumscribed to a single relation, but becomes a focus in which a
variety of relations converge, when it is placed in its right post in the
organism of thought, its limits and qualifications as it were
recognised and its degree ascertained,—then that thought is
rendered 'concrete.' A concrete notion is a notion in its totality,
looking before and after, connected indissolubly with others: a unity
of elements, a meeting-point of opposites. An abstract notion is one
withdrawn from everything that naturally goes along with it, and
enters into its constitution. All this is no disparagement of
abstraction. To abstract is a necessary stage in the process of
knowledge. But it is equally necessary to insist on the danger of
clinging, as to an ultimate truth, to the pseudo-simplicity of
abstraction, which forgets altogether what it is in certain situations
desirable for a time to overlook.
In a short essay, with much grim humour and quaint illustrations,
Hegel tried to show what was meant by the name 'abstract,' which
in his use of it denotes the cardinal vice of the 'practical' habit of
mind. From this essay, entitled 'Who is the Abstract Thinker[1]?' it
may be interesting to quote a few lines. A murderer is, we may
suppose, led to the scaffold. In the eyes of the multitude he is a
murderer and nothing more. The ladies perhaps may make the
remark that he is a strong, handsome, and interesting man. At such
a remark the populace is horrified. "What! a murderer handsome?
Can anybody's mind be so low as to call a murderer handsome? You
must be little better yourselves." And perhaps a priest who sees into
the heart, and knows the reasons of things, will point to this remark,
as evidence of the corruption of morals prevailing among the upper
classes. A student of character, again, inquires into the antecedents
of the criminal's up-bringing: he finds that he owes his existence to
ill-assorted parents; or he discovers that this man has suffered
severely for some trifling offence, and that under the bitter feelings
thus produced he has spurned the rules of society, and cannot
support himself otherwise than by crime. No doubt there will be
people who when they hear this explanation will say "Does this
person then mean to excuse the murderer?" In my youth I
remember hearing a city magistrate complain that book-writers were
going too far, and trying to root out Christianity and good morals
altogether. Some one, it appeared, had written a defence of suicide.
It was horrible! too horrible! On further inquiry it turned out that the
book in question was the Sorrows of Werther.
'By abstract thinking, then, is meant that in the murderer we see
nothing but the simple fact that he is a murderer, and by this single
quality annihilate all the human nature which is in him. The polished
and sentimental world of Leipsic thought otherwise. They threw their
bouquets, and twined their flowers round the wheel and the criminal
who was fastened to it.—But this also is the opposite pole of
abstraction.—It was in a different strain that I once heard a poor old
woman, an inmate of the workhouse, rise above the abstraction of
the murderer. The sun shone, as the severed head was laid upon the
scaffold. "How finely," said the woman, "does God's gracious sun
lighten up Binder's head!" We often say of a poor creature who
excites our anger that he is not worth the sun shining on him. That
woman saw that the murderer's head was in the sunlight, and that it
had not become quite worthless. She raised him from the
punishment of the scaffold into the sunlit grace of God. It was not
by wreaths of violets or by sentimental fancies that she brought
about the reconciliation: she saw him in the sun above received into
grace.'
 [1] 'Wer denkt abstrakt!' (Vermischte Schriften, vol. ii. p. 402.)

CHAPTER XXII.

FROM SENSE TO THOUGHT.

Induction and Experience are names to which is often assigned the

honour of being the source of all our knowledge. But what induction
and experience consist in, is what we are supposed to be already
aware of; and that is—it may be briefly said—the concentration of
the felt and sense-given fragments into an intimate unity. The
accidents and fortunes that have befallen us in lapses of time, the
scenes that have been set before and around us in breadths of
space, are condensed into a mood of mind, a habitual shading of
judgment, or frame of thought. The details of fact re-arrange
themselves into a general concept; their essence gets distilled into a
concentrated form. Their meaning disengages itself from its
embodiment, and floats as a self-sustaining form in an ideal world.
Thus if we look at the larger process of history, we see every period
trying to translate the sensuous fact of its life into a formula of
thought, and to fix it in definite characters. The various parts of
existence, and existence as a whole, are stripped of their sensible or
factual nature, in which we originally feel and come into contact with
them, and are reduced to their simple equivalents in terms of
thought. From sense and immediate feeling there is, in the first
place, generated an image or idea which at least represents and
stands for reality; and from that, in the second place, comes a
thought or notion proper, which holds the facts in unity.
The phenomenon may, perhaps, be illustrated by the case of
numbers. To the adult European, numbers and numbering are an
obvious and essential part of our scheme of things that seems to
need no special explanation. But the experience of children suggests
its artificiality, and the evidence from the history of language
corroborates that surmise. If number be in a way describable as part
of the sense-experience, or total impression, it certainly does not
come upon us with the same passivity on our part as the perception
of taste or colour, or even of shape. It postulates a higher grade of
activity. As Plato says, it 'awakes the intelligence': it implies a
question and looks forward to an answer: it is thus the first
appearance of what in its later fullness will be called 'Dialectic,' To
put it otherwise: Numbering can only proceed where there is a unit,
and an identity: it implies a one, and it implies an infinite repetibility
of that one[1] It thus postulates the double mental act, first of
reducing the various to its basis of identity, and, secondly, of
performing a synthesis of the identical units thus created. In the
highly artificial world in which we live all this seems simple enough.
The products of machinery, articles of furniture, dress, &c., &c., are
already uniform items: and the strokes of a clock seem almost to
invite summation. But in free nature this similarity is much less
obviously stamped on things: and the products of primitive art—of
literal manu-facture—display an individuality, an element of personal
taste, even, which is necessarily lacking in things turned out by
machinery. Thus it was necessary, before we could number, to
reduce the qualitatively different to a quantitative equality or
comparability. There are indeed some instances, in that nearest of
things to us, the human body, which might help. There is the
obvious similarity of organs and limbs which go in pairs, and which
might easily suggest a dual, as, so to speak, a sensuous fact
amongst other facts. Again, there is the hand and its five fingers, or
the two hands and the ten fingers. The five or ten, as a whole
naturally given, suggest a grouping of numbers in natural
aggregates. The fingers, again, (and here we may keep at first to
the fingers proper, minus the thumb,) may be without much
ingenuity said to give us a set of four, naturally distinct, yet naturally
alike, and needing, so to speak, the minimum of intelligence to
create the numerical scale from one to four. It is by them, indeed,
that Plato, it may be unconsciously, illustrates the genesis of number.
Here in short you have the natural abacus of the nations, but one
restricted, first, perhaps to the group 1-4, secondly to the group 1-
10.
We have seen how the dual was, in certain instances, almost a
natural perceptive fact. But when it is so envisaged, it is hardly
recognised as number strictly so called. It is only a fresh and
peculiar sensuous attribute of things: a thing which has the quality
of duplication, not a thought which is the synthesis of two identical
units. It is a sort of accident, not part of a regular system or series.
So again with the plural, which may appear in several shapes before
it is assigned to its proper place as a systematic function of the
singular. If the Malay, in order to say 'the king of all apes' has to
enumerate one after another the several sub-species of ape, or if to
express 'houses' he has to reduplicate the singular, to insert a word
meaning 'all' or 'many,' we can see that the conception of number is
for him still in the bonds of sense. It is not a synthetic category, but
only a material multitude. But in other cases the plural proper is
almost confounded with the so-called 'collective.' It is not an
unfamiliar fact in Greek and Latin that the plural has acquired a
meaning of its own,—not the mere multiple of its singular; as also
that the collective term is occasionally used as an abstract,
occasionally as the more or less indeterminate collection of the
individuals. Such plurals and such collectives represent a stage of
language and conception when the aggregate of singulars form a
uniquely-qualified case of the object. And the peculiarity of them is
seen in the way the plurality is immersed in and restricted to the
special class of objects: as e. g. when in English the plurality of a
number of ships is verbally stereotyped as against the plurality of a
number of sheep, or of partridges (fleet, flock, covey). In such
instances the category of number is completely pervaded and
modified by the quality of the objects it is applied to. So, in the
Semitic languages, the so-called 'broken plural' is a quasi-collective,
which grammatically counts as a feminine singular (like so many
Latin and Greek collectives): and whereas the more regular plural is
generally shown by separable affix, this quasi-collective plural enters
the very body of the word by vowel-change, indicating as it were by
this absorption the constitution of a specifically new view of things.
On the other hand, it may be said, there is in this collective a trace
of the emergence of the universal and identical element through the
generalisation due to the conjunction of several similars all acting as
one[2]
In a true plural, on the contrary, it is required that the sign of
number be clearly eliminated from any peculiarities of its special
object, and be distinctly separated from the collective. And similarly
the true numeral has to be realised in its abstractness, as a category
per se. And to do this requires some amount of abstraction. In
Greek, for example, we meet the distinction between numbers in the
abstract, pure numbers (such as four and six), and bodily or physical
numbers (such as four men, six trees)[3]. The geometrical aspect
under which numbers were regarded by the Greeks, e. g. as oblong
or square numbers, bears in the same direction. But another
phenomenon in language tells the tale more distinctly[4]. Abundantly
in Sanscrit and Greek, more rarely in Zend and Teutonic, and here
and there in the Semitic languages, we meet with what is known as
the dual number, a special grammatical form intended to express a
pair of objects. The witty remark of Du Ponceau[5] concerning the
Greek dual, that it had apparently been invented only for lovers and
married people, may illustrate its uses, but hardly suffices to explain
its existence in language. But a comparison of barbarian dialects
serves to show that the dual is, as it were, a prelude to the plural,—
a first attempt to grasp the notion of plurality in a definite way,
which served its turn in primitive society, but afterwards
disappeared, when the plural had been developed, and the numerals
had attained a form of their own. If this be so, the dual is what
physiologists call a rudimentary organ, and tells the same story as
these organs do of the processes of nature.
The language of the Melanesian island of Annatom, one of the New
Hebrides, may be taken as an instance of a state of speech in which
the dual is natural. That language possesses a fourfold distinction of
number in its personal pronouns, a different form to mark the
singular, dual, trial, and plural: and the pronoun of the first person
plural distinguishes in addition whether the person addressed is or is
not included in the 'we-two,' 'we-three,' or 'we-many' of the
speaker[6]. The same language however possesses only the first
three numerals, and in the translation of the Bible into this dialect it
was necessary to introduce the English words, four, five, &c. The two
facts must be taken together: the luxuriance of the personal
pronouns and the scanty development of numerals in such
languages are two phenomena of the same law. The numeral 'four'
to these tribes is said to bear the meaning of 'many' or 'several,'
Another fact points in the same direction. In many languages, such
as those of China, Further India and Mexico, it is customary in
numbering to use what W. von Humboldt has called class-words.
Here it is felt that an artificial unity has to be created, a common
denominator found, and all reduced to it, before any summation can
be carried out. Scholars and officials, in Chinese, can only be classed
under the rubric of 'jewel' or dignity: and animals or fish by 'tails,' as
if thereby only could one get a handle to hold them and count them.
(The idiom still lingers in western languages: as in English, heads of
cabbage, or of cattle: or German, sechs Mann Soldaten.) So in
Malay, instead of 'five boys' the phrase used is 'boy five-man': in
other words, the numerals are supposed to inhere as yet in objects
of a special kind or common occurrence[7]. And among the South
Sea Islanders the consciousness of number is decidedly personal:
that is to say, the distinction between one and two is first conceived
as a distinction between 'I' and 'we two.' Even this amount of
simplification surpasses what is found amongst some Australian
tribes. There we find four duals: one for brothers and sisters: one
for parents and children: one for husbands and wives: and one
between brothers-in-law[8]. Each pair has a different form. We thus
seem to see to what early language is applied: not to designate the
objects of nature, but the members of the primitive family and their
interests. The consciousness of numbers was first awakened by the
need of distinguishing and combining the things that belonged to
and specially interested men and women in the narrow circle of
barbarian life[9]. It is not altogether imaginative in principle, though
it may be occasionally surmise in details, to connect the rise of
grammatical forms with the temperament and character of the
people, and therefore with its social organisation. If the Bantoo or
Caffir languages of Southern Africa instead of a single third personal
pronoun and third personal termination to the verb use the separate
forms corresponding to the ten class-prefixes of the nouns, it must
be in accordance with the general spirit and system of these tribes.
The various plural forms, if they persist, will reflect contemporary
modes of life.
Numbers were at first immersed in the persons, and then, as things
came to be considered also, in the things numbered. The mind
seems to have proceeded slowly from the vague one to definite
numbers. And the first decided step was taken towards an
apprehension of numbers when two was distinguished from one,
and the distinction was made part of the personal terminations. The
plural was a further step in the same direction: the real value of
which, however, did not become apparent until the numerals had
been separately established in forms of their own. When that was
accomplished, the special form of the dual became useless: it had
outlived its purpose, and henceforth it ceased to have, any but that
poetical beauty of old association which often adorns the once
natural, but now obsolete growths of the past. When the numerals
were thus emancipated from their material and sensuous
environment, quantity was translated from outward being in its
embodiments into a form of thought. At first, indeed, it was placed
in an ethereal or imaginative space, the counterpart as it were of the
sensuous space in which it had been previously immersed. It
became a denizen of the mental region, as it had been before a
habitant of the sense-world.
The mind was informed with quantity in the shape of number: but it
does not follow from this, that the new product was comprehended,
or the process of its production kept in view. Like all new inventions
(and numeration may fairly be classed under that head), it was laid
hold of, and all its consequences, results, and uses estimated and
realised by the practical and defining intellect. In one direction, it
became, like many new inventions in the early days of society, a
magic charm, and was invested with mystery, sacredness, and
marvellous powers. But the intelligent mind,—the understanding,—
resolved to make better use of the new instrument: and that in two
ways, in practical work and in theory. On the one hand it was
applied practically in the dealings of life,—in commerce, contracts,
legislation, and religion. On the other hand, the new conception of
number, which common sense and the instinctive action of men had
evolved, was carried out in all its theory: it was analysed in all
directions, and its elements combined in all possible ways. The result
was the science of arithmetic, and mathematics in general. Such
consequences did the reflective understanding derive from the
analysis of its datum,—the fact of quantity freed from its sensuous
envelope.
The general action of understanding, and of practical thought, is of
this kind. It accepts the representative images which have emerged
from sensation, as they occur: and tries to appreciate them, to give
them precision, to carry them into details, and to analyse them until
their utmost limits of meaning are explored. Where they have come
from, and where they lead to,—the process out of which they spring,
and which fixes the extent of their validity,—are questions of no
interest to the understanding[10]. It takes its objects, as given in
popular conception, as fixed and ultimate entities to be expounded
in detail.
We have taken number as one example of the transference of a
sensible or sense-immersed fact into a form of thought: but a form
which is still placed in a superior or mental space. One advantage of
taking number as illustration, is that numbered things are
distinguished from numbers in an emphatic and recognised way.
Nobody will dispute that the abstraction, as it is called, has an
existence of its own, and can be made a legitimate object of
independent investigation. But if the process be more obvious in the
case of the numerals, there must have been a similar course of
development leading to the pronouns, the prepositions, and the
auxiliary verbs—to what has been called the 'formal' or 'pronominal'
or 'demonstrative' element, the connective and constructive tissue of
language. Whether these pronominal 'roots' form a special and
originally-distinct class of their own, or are derived from a
transmutation of more material or substantial elements, is a question
on which linguistic research casts as yet no very certain light. It is
true that on the one hand etymology is mainly silent on the origin of
pronouns, numerals, and the more fundamental prepositions (i. e.
cannot refer them to roots significant of qualitative being): and one
need not lay much stress on remarks, like that of Gabelenz[11], that
in the Indo-Chinese languages the words for I, five, fish have a like
sound, as do those for thou, two, ear, or that I am, originally means
I breathe. In all languages—though with immense diversities of
degree, this formal element has attained a certain independence.
And in many instances we can more or less trace the process by
which there grew up in language an independent world of thought:
we can see the natural existence passing out of the range of the
senses into spiritual relations. Before our eyes a world of reason is
slowly constituting itself in the history of culture: and we, who live
now, enter upon the inheritance which past ages have laid up for us.
There is, however, a difference between the way in which these
results look to us now, and the way in which they originally
organised themselves. The child who begins to learn a language in
the lesson-books and the grammars finds the members of it all, as it
were, upon one level: adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, and verbs
confront him with the same authority and rank. This appearance is
deceptive: it may easily suggest that the words are not members in
an organism, in and out of which they have developed. And this
organism of thought has its individual types, expressed in the great
families of human speech. Its generic form (as drawn out in a logical
system) appears in different grades, with different degrees of
fullness, in Altaic and Dravidian from what it does in Malay, or in
Chinese, and these again have their own predominant categories as
compared with those used in the American or African languages, or
in Indo-Germanic and Semitic. If the Altaic languages e. g. are
wanting in the verb proper, and manage with possessive suffixes and
nouns; if the Semitic tenses display a poverty which contrasts with
their wealth in Greek; and yet each group performs its function, we
may infer that each speech has a complete organism, though it does
not bring all its parts to adequate expression. All this distinction of
'parts of speech,' of forms, prefixes and suffixes, &c., is part of the
life of language, embodying in more or less distinct organs the
organisation of thought in the individual form it reached in that
speech-type. Thus in Chinese there are strictly speaking no isolated
words, nouns, or verbs: there are only abstract parts of a concrete
sentence; and grammar in Chinese therefore has no accidence (no
declensions, conjugations, &c.) but only syntax. Yet it is these
abstract fragments which exist and seem to have independence and
inherent meaning: whereas the unity in which they cohere to form a
concrete context is the fleeting sentence of the moment. At the
opposite extreme, again, the Mexican family of languages tend to
incorporate relations to subject and object with the verb, in such a
degree that the word almost becomes a sentence. Facts like these
suggest that a science of the forms of language, in proportion as it
generalises, tends to approach logic; and that logic will have a
converse tendency to elevate to an unduly typical position the
grammatical form of the languages with which the logician is best
acquainted.
If these points were remembered, there would be less absurd
employment of the grammatical categories of one group of
languages to systematise another. Greek and Sanscrit grammar plays
sad havoc with the organism of a Semitic tongue, and it is not less
out of place as a schema for delineating e. g. South African dialect.
Isolated words even in an Indo-Germanic language—even, we may
say, in such a language as English—are still fractional, and do not
get life and individuality except in their context. And it needs but a
little experience to show how various that individuality may be. It
needs perhaps still more meditation to realise that it is in this
individuality that the real life of language lies: in the words said and
written to express the thought of a personality. But, first, because
language has its material and mechanical side, and secondly,
because in civilised countries it further acquires a more stereotyped
mechanism in written and printed language, its parts tend to gain a
pseudo-independence. It is one aim of a philosophical dictionary to
restore the organic interconnexion which in the mere sequence of
vocables in juxtaposition is apt to be lost. What we call the meaning
of a word is something which carries us beyond that mere word,—
which restores the connexions which have been broken off and
forgotten. In the form of a dictionary, of course, this can only be
done piece-meal: but if each piece is done thoroughly, it can hardly
fail to bring out certain comprehensive connexions. The mere word
seems a simple thing; and one is at first disposed to get rid of its
difficulty by substituting a so-called synonym. But a deeper study
reveals the fact that an exact synonym is a thing one can no more
find than two peas which are absolutely indistinguishable. A
synonym is only a practical pis aller. But every word is really as it
were a point in an infinitely complex organic life, with its essence or
meaning determined by the currents to and fro which meet in it.
Words as we see them prima facie in a printed page do look
separate entities. They stand, one here and another there, in a
quasi-extension, with marks of direction and connexion pointing
from one to another, but of connexion apparently extraneous to the
more solid points which are represented by nouns and verbs, or
names of substances, actions, and attributes. Results, as they are, of
that practical analysis which the need of writing down language has
led to, they are treated as complete wholes, which by the speaker
are forced into certain temporary connexions. But this is an illusion
which, because a thing changes its relationships, assumes that it can
exist out of all relationships whatever. Every word of Language is
such an abstraction, isolated from its context. But amid these
contexts there are certain similarities: identical elements are
detected: and these identical elements are the common names of
language, the terms of general significance. In all cases, however,
what an utterance of language describes or expresses is a definite
individual event or scene, conceived as a concrete of several parts.
Each separate vocable is a contribution to the total: a step towards
the real redintegration of the whole out of its several parts. But the
total itself—the content of fact in any single sentence—is only an
abstraction,—a part of the universe which human interest and need
have isolated from the comprehensive scope of things. Thus, in two
degrees, we may say, the picture produced in the sentence falls
short of the truth of things. Each statement is an arbitrary or
accidental cutting out of the totality: each element of the cutting is
dependent on that abstraction, and relative to it. But—as in a given
group of speech, the same sets of circumstances will naturally be
selected, and tend to recur again and again,—the terms which
describe them will acquire a certain association with the objects, and
will come to be called the common names of these agents, acts, and
qualities. They denote or 'represent' the things and acts, conceived
however in certain aspects and relations, and not in their entirety
and totality of nature.
In this product of intellectual movement above the limits of
sensation we have the 'representation'[12] as Hegel calls it, on which
the Understanding turns its forces. We have one product of the
organic whole of thought taken by itself as if it were independent,
set forth as a settled nucleus for further acquaintance: and this one
point discussed fully and with precision, elaborated in all detail and
consequence, to the neglect of its context, and the necessary
limitations involved in the notion. The process of name-giving may
illustrate this tendency in human thought to touch its objects only in
one point. The names given to objects do not embrace the whole
nature of these objects, but give expression only to one striking
feature in them. Thus the name of the horse points it out as 'the
strong' or 'the swift': the moon is 'the measurer' or 'the shining one';
and so in all cases. The object as expressed in these names is
viewed from one aspect, or in one point: and the name, which
originally at least corresponds to the conception, meets the object,
properly speaking, on that side only, or in that relation. The object is
not studied in its own nature, and in its total world, but as it
specially enters the range of human interest, and serves human
utilities. One can at least guess why it should be so: why a name
should, in logical language, express an 'accidens' and not the
'essentia' of the object. For the investigation of primitive language
seems to show that words, as we know them in separate existence,
are a secondary formation: and that the first significant speech was
an utterance intended to describe a scene, an action, a
phenomenon, or complex of event. In point of time, the primary fact
of language is an agglomeration or aggregate,—we may call it either
word or clause (λόγος in short)—which describes in one breath a
highly individualised action or phenomenon. The spirit or unifying
principle in this group might be the accent. Such a word-group
denotes a highly specialised form of being: and if we call it a word,
we may say that the earliest words, and the words of barbarous
tribes, are ingeniously special.[13] But it would be more correct to
say, that in such a group the elements of the scene enter only from
a single aspect or in a single relation. Accordingly when
disintegration begins, the result is as follows. The elements of the
group, having now become independent words held together by the
syntax of the sentence, are adopted to denote the several objects
which entered into the total phenomenon. But these words, or
fragments of the word-group, 'represent' the objects in question
from a certain point of view, and not in their integrity. The names of
things therefore touch them only in one point, and express only one
aspect. And thus, although different names will arise for the same
thing, as it enters into different groups, in each case the name will
connote only a general attribute and not the nature of the thing.
These names are in the Hegelian sense of the term 'abstract.' In
popular phraseology, they are only 'signs' of things: i. e. not
'symbols' (though they may have been in some cases symbolic in
origin), for in a symbol there is a natural correspondence or sensible
analogy to the thing symbolised, but something 'instituted,' due to
an 'understanding' or convention.
[1] See vol. ii. p. 190, (Logic, § 102).
[2] See Max Müller in Mind, vol. i. 345.
[3] Pure number is ἀριθμὸς μοναδικός: applied number is αριθμὸς
φυσικὸς or σωματικός. Aristotle, Metaph. N. 5, speaks of αριθμὸς
πύρινος ἤ γήϊνος. But this is only Greek idiom: as we say 'Greek
history' instead of 'History of Greece:' or vice versa, when we
translate Populus Romanus by 'people of Rome.' Aristotle is
speaking of 'proportions' or 'amounts' of fire or earth in the
compounds of these elements.
[4] See L. Geiger, Ursprung und Entwickelung der menschlichen
Sprache und Vernunft (vol. i. p. 380). And Gabelenz 'Die
melanesischen Sprachen' in the Abhandlungen der Sächsischen
Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften (VIII), 1861, pp. 89-91.
[5] Mémoire sur le Systeme grammatical, &c. p. 155.
[6] Cf. nous and nous autres. The same distinction is found in
some American languages. There is a dual in the language of the
Greenlanders; but it is not, however, used when a natural duality
seems to call for it, but in cases when, though there might have
been several things, only two are actually found.
[7] W. von Humboldt, Verschiedenheit des menschlichen
Sprachbaues, p. 423 (ed. 1841); Misteli, Typen des Sprachbaues
(1893).
[8] Capt. Grey, Vocabulary of the dialects of S. W. Australia, pp.
xxi and 104 (1840).
[9] The sharp distinction between the first and second personal
pronouns and the third: the want of any apparent connexion in
the Indo-Germanic languages between the first and second
persons singular and the plural form seems to point in the same
direction.
[10] Cf. vol. ii. Notes and Illustrations, p. 400.
[11] Die Sprachwissenschaft, p. 168.
[12] 'Vorstellung,' as distinguished from 'Begriff.'
[13] Thus in Malay, there are about twenty words for strike,
according as it is done with thick or thin wood, downwards,
horizontally, or upwards, with the hand, with the fist, with the flat
hand, with a club, with the sharp edge, with a hammer, &c. (See
Misteli, Typen des Sprachbaues, p. 265.)
 CHAPTER XXIII.

FIGURATE OR REPRESENTATIVE THOUGHT.

The compensating dialectic whereby reason, under the guise of

imagination, overthrows the narrowness of popular estimates, makes
itself observed even in the popular use of the terms abstract and
concrete. Terms like state, mind, wealth, may from one point of view
be called abstract, from another concrete. At a certain pitch these
abstractions cease to be abstract, and become even to popular
sense very concrete realities. In the tendency to personification in
language we see the same change from abstract to concrete: as
when Virtue is called a goddess, or Fashion surnamed the despot of
womankind. In such instances, imagination, more or less in the
service of art and religion, upsets the narrow vulgar estimates of
reality. But it upsets them, so to speak, by giving to the abstraction
(through its creative power) that sensuous concreteness which the
mere abstract lacks and which the ordinary mind alone recognises as
real. It 'stoops to conquer.' Such a representation is, as Hegel
says[1], 'the synthetic combination of the Universal and Individual':
'synthetic,' because not their free, spontaneous, and essential unity,
but the supreme product of the artistic will and hand, which, rather
than let the universal perish by neglect, build for it, the eternal and
omnipresent, 'a temple made with hands.' In mythology we can see
the same process: by which, as it is phrased, an abstract term
becomes concrete: by which, as we may more correctly say, a
thought is transformed into, or rather stops short at, a
representative picture. The many gods of polytheism are the fixed
and solidified shapes in which the several degrees of religious
growth have taken 'a local habitation and a name': or they bear
witness to the failure of the greater part of the world to grasp the
idea of Deity in its unity and totality apart from certain local and
temporary conditions. So, too, terms like force, law, matter,—the
abstractions of the mere popular mind—are by certain periods
reduced to the level of sensuous things, and spoken of as real
entities, somewhere and somehow existent, apart from the thinking
medium to which they belong. Such terms, again, as property,
wealth, truth, are popularly identified with the objects in which they
are for the time and place manifested or embodied.
In these ways the abstract, in the ordinary meaning, becomes in the
ordinary meaning concrete. The distinction between abstract and
concrete is turned into a distinction between understanding and
sense, instead of, as Hegel makes it, a distinction in the adequacy
and completeness of thought itself. Thought (the Idea), as has been
more than once pointed out, is the principle of unification or
unification itself: it is organisation plus the consciousness of
organisation: it is the unifier, the unity, and the unified,—subject as
well as object, and eternal copula of both. An attempt is at first
made in two degrees to represent the thought in terms of the senses
as a sort of superior or higher-class sensible. When the impossibility
of that attempt is seen, common sense ends by denying what it has
learned to call the super-sensible altogether. These three plans may
be called respectively the mythological, the metaphysical, and the
positive or nominalist fallacies of thought. In the mythological, or
strictly anthropomorphic fallacy, thought is conceived under the
bodily shape and the physical qualities of humanity, as a separate
unifying, controlling, synthetic agent, through whose interference
the several things, otherwise dead and motionless, acquire a
semblance of life and action, though in reality but puppets or
marionettes: that is to say, it is identified with a subject of like
passions with ourselves, a repetition of the particular human
personality, with its narrowness and weakness. The action of the
Idea is here replaced by the agency of supposed living beings,
invested with superhuman powers. In the metaphysical or realist
fallacy we have a feeble ghostly reproduction of the mythological.
The living personal deity is replaced by a faint scare-crow of abstract
deity. The cause of the changes that go on in nature is now
attributed to indwelling sympathies and animosities, to the
abhorrence of a vacuum, to selection, affinity, and the like: to
essences and laws conceived of as somehow existent in a mystic
space and time. In the positive or nominalist fallacy, the failure of
these two theories begins to be felt: and the mind, which had only
heard of unifying reason under these two phases and is meanwhile
sure of its sense-perceptions, treats the objective synthesis as a
dream and a delusion. Or, at best, it regards the synthesis as
essentially subjective—as a complementary idealising activity of ours
which ekes out the defects of reality, and brings continuity into the
discontinuous. Our thought—(it is only our thought)—is but an
instrument, distinct from us and from the reality: yet acting as a
bridge to connect these two opposing shores—a bridge however
which does not really reach the other side, but only an artificial
image, which simulates to us, and will for ever simulate, the
inaccessible reality. This last view is the utterance of the popular
matter-of-fact reason, when in weariness and tedium it turns from
the attempt to grasp thought pure and simple, and instead of
reducing the metaphysical antitheses to the transparent unity of
comprehension, relapses into mere acceptance of a given reality.
In some of these cases the full step into pure thought is never
made. The creations of mythology, for example, display an
unfinished and baffled attempt to rise from the separation of sense
to the unity and organisation of thought. The gods of heathenism
are only individuals—and individuals only meant to be, and by the
act of faith and devotion set forth as reality before the worshipper:
but they are individuals in which imagination embodies a unified and
centralised system of forces or principles. They mean the powers of
nature and of mind, but the sceptre in their hands is only a sign of
power attributed by the believer; and far away, encompassing alike
them and him, is the great relentless necessity. In other cases there
is a relapse: when the higher stage of thought has been attained, it
is instantaneously lost. Terms which are really thoughts are again
reduced to the level of the things of sense, individualised in some
object, which, though it is only a representation or sign, is allowed
to usurp the place of the thought which it but partially and by
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