Abstract: On the basis of characteristics of vibration in the rotor system with spring nonlinearity, a new method for vibration control has been developed. In the method,the spring characteristics of the bearing housing are controlled to be of softening nonlinearity when the rotor supported on it is accelerated and of hardening one when the rotor is decelerated. So the amplitude of vibratory response of the rotor system on the bearing housing always varies along the smallest solution curve in the whole operating process. Its dynamic behaviour is predicted and verified by experiments. Both theoretical and experimental results show that not only the vibratory amplitudes and the transmitted forces are suppressed greatly but also nonlinear vibration performance of the rotor supported on squeeze film dampers such as“lock up”at rotor pin\|pin critical speeds and asynchronous vibration can be avoided.