The Virtual Rotor Kit (VRK) Project is a computational tool developed to simulate tests typically performed on a rotor test rig. Created by  Dr. Luis Medina at the Universidad Austral de Chile, the project is now a collaborative effort with Dr. Carmen Müller-Karger from Florida International University and Dr. Euro Casanova from Universidad del Bío-Bío in Concepción, Chile. Together, they are exploring the tool’s educational potential and other possible applications based on this project. Powered by PyChrono, a Python library that wraps a Project Chrono library, the VRK Project aims to provide a stand-alone solution to help engineering students, technicians, and engineers better understand vibration-related issues in rotating machines and validate techniques to mitigate the effects of rotor vibration causes.

While the VRK Project does not seek to replace practical experience at a real rotating machinery test facility, it aims to complement and enhance your understanding of rotordynamic phenomena such as rotor unbalancing, resonant operation, and rotor-bearing-support interactions. A beta demo version of the application is currently available for interested users to evaluate and provide feedback to help improve the feasibility of the VRK Project.

So if you're interested in gaining valuable insights into the relationship between measuring mechanical vibrations and rotor dynamics, join the VRK Project beta testing program today and take the first step towards enhancing your knowledge of rotating machinery dynamics.

This freely available  version was developed using reliable and validated open-source tools. It primarily uses PyChrono  as core library, alongside other well-known Python libraries such as Numpy, Scipy and Matplotlib, as well as FreeCAD, PySimpleGUI and Pyinstaller.

By running this stand-alone version, the user can conduct tests to balance a rotor using a single balancing plane. Since vibration amplitude measurements and a reference signal are “acquired”, the user can decide what rotor balancing method to apply to find the proper solution. For instance, one typical method could be based on vibration amplitude and phase measurements (influence coefficient method), or only based on vibration amplitude (i.e., four-run balancing method). 

 Similar to a laboratory rotor balancing experience, it is up to the user to process the measurements to find the rotor balancing solution. Furthermore, for validation purposes, the user can implement and hence verify the calculated solution by running a verification test using the VRK, considering constraints on placing trial weights at the single plane, and taking into account the available trial weights, in the same way as the balancing tests are conducted in a laboratory's rotor test rig.  

For more details, please check up the tutorial video, made by Dr. Carmen Müller-Karger, or  the illustrative example, which  describe how VRK works. 

The demo's installation for Windows is quite easy, you just follow these three simple steps:

• Click on following link to download a 322 MB compressed file (.rar)

·         VRK demo version for Windows (September, 2022)

• Once is downloaded in your system, create a new folder to extract the folder that contains the .exe file and data folders. Please, create this new folder  in your  local  drive avoiding a long path to access to it. 

• Run demo.exe file (just by double clicking on it, or typing demo.exe at command promp from the folder where demo.exe is located ). By running the demo with the default inputs you can get a glance of it. 

VRK demo has been bundled in a single executable for an easy distribution. For this reason, it may be little slow (i.e. couple of seconds) to start up.

We would really appreciate if you let us know your thoughts over using this demo, and about what the project is intended to be, by answering a  5-question survey or, if you prefer, reaching me by email. Thanks in advance for your cooperation.

The VRK Project Team

The current VRK  version was developed thanks to the references mentioned below. Furthermore, if you wish to cite this project, please use the following reference:

Medina Uzcátegui LU, Müller-Karger Pereda C, Casanova Medina E. The Virtual Rotor Kit Project: A virtual rotor test rig for balancing experiments. International Journal of Mechanical Engineering Education. 2023;0(0). doi:10.1177/03064190231197119

 For this and similar projects, it is important to acknowledge the work of the open-source developer community, whose efforts make the computational tools used in this project available. 

[1]      “Project Chrono - An Open-Source Physics Engine.” https://projectchrono.org/ (accessed Jan. 07, 2022).

[2]      M. L. Adams, Rotating Machinery Research and Development Test Rigs. CRC Press, 2017.

[3]      Tasora A., “Example: FEA of the Jeffcott rotor passing through resonance.” demo_FEA_beamsIGA.py in pychrono-6.0.0-py38_638/Lib/site-packages/pychrono/demos/fea. 2019.

[4]      A. Alsaleh, H. M. Sedighi, and H. M. Ouakad, “Experimental and theoretical investigations of the lateral vibrations of an unbalanced Jeffcott rotor,” Frontiers of Structural and Civil Engineering, vol. 14, no. 4, pp. 1024–1032, 2020.

[5]     Medina Uzcátegui LU, Müller-Karger Pereda C, Casanova Medina E. The Virtual Rotor Kit Project: A virtual rotor test rig for balancing experiments. International Journal of Mechanical Engineering Education. 2023;0(0). doi:10.1177/03064190231197119

[6]    Muller-Karger, C. M., & Medina Uzcategui, L. U. (2024, June), Enhancing Mechanical Vibration Education through Virtual Labs: A Focus on Rotor Balancing Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. 10.18260/1-2--47309

[7]    FreeCAD/FreeCAD. FreeCAD, 2022. Accessed: Jan. 07, 2022. [Online]. Available: https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD

[8]     Project CHRONO. projectchrono, 2022. Accessed: Jan. 07, 2022. [Online]. Available: https://github.com/projectchrono/chrono

[9]      PySimpleGUI, PySimpleGUI. 2022. Accessed: Jan. 07, 2022. [Online]. Available: https://github.com/PySimpleGUI/PySimpleGUI

[10]      David Cortesi, Giovanni Bajo, William Caban, and Gordon McMillan, PyInstaller. PyInstaller, 2022. Accessed: Jan. 07, 2022. [Online]. Available: https://github.com/pyinstaller/pyinstaller/blob/41842f5ad31dd33d7ba4ae03daace2287c80dcb7/doc/index.rst