A stability experiment on high speed rotor and gas lubrication bearings was presented in this paper.Based on shaft center orbits

frequency coupling 3-D plot

frequency spectrum and bifurcation plot

the nonlinear characteristics of rotor bearing system were analyzed.The experiment proved that

gas whirl in gas bearing and rotor system was a major contributing factor to nonlinear instability.Double periodic bifurcation caused by gas whirl was an inevitable path to chaos vibration.The instability rotational speed will vary a lot from design speed by modulation of the coupling relationship between system's inherent frequency and gas whirl frequency

meanwhile effective control of chaos vibration based on bounded ness of chaos is a new method to improve nonlinear stability of rotor and bearings.