Comparisons of the common methods for obtaining the periodic responses show that the harmonic balance method with alternating frequency/time (HB-AFT) domain technique has some advantages in dealing with nonlinear problems of fractional exponential models. By the HB-AFT method, a rigid rotor supported by ball bearings with nonlinearity of Hertz contact and ball passage vibrations is considered. With the aid of the Floquet theory, the movement characteristics of interval stability are deeply studied. Besides, a simple strategy to determine the monodromy matrix is proposed for the stability analysis.