Physical explanations of the destabilizing effect of damping in rotating parts

The destabilizing effect of rotating damping was investigated. When the rotation was faster than the whirl, rotating damping drags the orbiting particle forward. When stationary damping was also present, the stability borderline was readily determined by balancing the backward and forward drags. A key notion was that a forward whirl at rate omega a sub n with respect to stationary axes appears to be a backward whirl at rate Omega - omega sub n with respect to a system rotating supercritically at rate Omega. The growth rate of unstable whirls (or the decay rate of stable whirls was readily estimated by a simple energy balance.