scholarly journals Redesign of a High-Pressure Compressor Blade Accounting for Nonlinear Structural Interactions

Author(s):  
Alain Batailly ◽  
Mathias Legrand ◽  
Antoine Millecamps ◽  
Sébastien Cochon ◽  
François Garcin

Recent numerical developments dedicated to the simulation of rotor/stator interaction involving direct structural contacts have been integrated within the Snecma industrial environment. This paper presents the first attempt to benefit from these developments and account for structural blade/casing contacts at the design stage of a high-pressure compressor blade. The blade of interest underwent structural divergence after blade/abradable coating contact occurrences on a rig test. The design improvements were carried out in several steps with significant modifications of the blade stacking law while maintaining aerodynamic performance of the original blade design. After a brief presentation of the proposed design strategy, basic concepts associated with the design variations are recalled. The iterated profiles are then numerically investigated and compared with respect to key structural criteria such as: (1) their mass, (2) the residual stresses stemming from centrifugal stiffening, (3) the vibratory level under aerodynamic forced response, and (4) the vibratory levels when unilateral contact occurs. Significant improvements of the final blade design are found: the need for an early integration of nonlinear structural interactions criteria in the design stage of modern aircraft engines components is highlighted.

Author(s):  
Alain Batailly ◽  
Mathias Legrand ◽  
Antoine Millecamps ◽  
Sèbastien Cochon ◽  
François Garcin

Recent numerical developments dedicated to the simulation of rotor/stator interaction involving direct structural contacts have been integrated within the Snecma industrial environment. This paper presents the first attempt to benefit from these developments and account for structural blade/casing contacts at the design stage of a high-pressure compressor blade. The blade of interest underwent structural divergence after blade/abradable coating contact occurrences on a rig test. The design improvements were carried out in several steps with significant modifications of the blade stacking law while maintaining aerodynamic performance of the original blade design. After a brief presentation of the proposed design strategy, basic concepts associated with the design variations are recalled. The iterated profiles are then numerically investigated and compared with respect to key structural criteria such as: (1) their mass, (2) the residual stresses stemming from centrifugal stiffening, (3) the vibratory level under aerodynamic forced response and (4) the vibratory levels when unilateral contact occurs. Significant improvements of the final blade design are found: the need for an early integration of nonlinear structural interactions criteria in the design stage of modern aircraft engines components is highlighted.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. F72OUU
Author(s):  
Victor Bicalho Civinelli de Almeida ◽  
Dieter Peitsch

A numerical aeroelastic assessment of a highly loaded high pressure compressor exposed to flow disturbances is presented in this paper. The disturbances originate from novel, inherently unsteady, pressure gain combustion processes, such as pulse detonation, shockless explosion, wave rotor or piston topping composite cycles. All these arrangements promise to reduce substantially the specific fuel consumption of present-day aeronautical engines and stationary gas turbines. However, their unsteady behavior must be further investigated to ensure the thermodynamic efficiency gain is not hindered by stage performance losses. Furthermore, blade excessive vibration (leading to high cycle fatigue) must be avoided, especially under the additional excitations frequencies from waves traveling upstream of the combustor. Two main numerical analyses are presented, contrasting undisturbed with disturbed operation of a typical industrial core compressor. The first part of the paper evaluates performance parameters for a representative blisk stage with high-accuracy 3D unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes computations. Isentropic efficiency as well as pressure and temperature unsteady damping are determined for a broad range of disturbances. The nonlinear harmonic balance method is used to determine the aerodynamic damping. The second part provides the aeroelastic harmonic forced response of the rotor blades, with aerodynamic damping and forcing obtained from the unsteady calculations in the first part. The influence of blade mode shapes, nodal diameters and forcing frequency matching is also examined.


Author(s):  
Herwart T. Hoenen ◽  
Karsten Ellenberger

In modern jet propulsion Systems the core engine has an essential influence on the total engine performance. Especially the high pressure compressor plays an important role in this scheme. Substantial factors here are losses due to tip clearance effects and aerodynamic airfoil quality. During flight Operation the airfoils are subject to wear and tear on the leading edge. These effects cause a shortening of the chord length and the leading edge profiles become deformed. This results in a deterioration of the engine efficiency performance level and a reduced stall margin. The paper deals with the re-contouring of the leading edges of compressor airfoils. Lufthansa Technik AG in cooperation with the Institute of Jet Propulsion and Turbomachinery (RWTH Aachen University) developed a new method for the profile definition for the blade refurbishment. The common procedure of smoothing out the leading edges manually on a wheel grinding machine can not provide a defined contour nor a reproducible result of the overhaul process. In order to achieve optimized flow conditions in the compressor blade rows, suitable leading edge contours have to be defined for the worn airfoils. In an iterative process the flow behavior of these redesigned profiles is checked by numerical flow simulations and the shape of the profiles is improved. The following machining of the new defined leading edge contours is achieved on a grinding station handled by an appropriately programmed robot. Within this Advanced Re-contouring Process (ARP) the worn blades are precision-measured and then provided with an aerodynamically optimized leading edge profile numerically newly developed under computer control. The application of this process enhances the performance and lowers the fuel consumption while prolonging the blades’ service life by 25%. The performance achievable with ARP has been confirmed both through a long term analysis and by a back-to-back comparison test on the engine test stand. For this purpose the stages 3 through 14 of a CF6-50 high pressure compressor were on the one hand fitted with conventionally overhauled blades and on the other with ARP-optimized blades of the same basic geometry. By installing the optimized blades the EGT margin could be increased by 3° to 4° C. This results in an prolongation of the on-wing time by more than 1000 hours.


Author(s):  
A. Boschetti ◽  
E. Y. Kawachi ◽  
M. A. S. Oliveira

This work presents preliminary results of corrosion studies for three blades, one of the low pressure compressor and two of two different stages of the high pressure compressor of a gas turbine, which has been operating for 5,000 hours. Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy (EDS), X-ray diffraction (XRD), Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS) in aqueous solution containing chloride, and Atomic Absorption Spectrometry (AAS) were used to characterize the blades surfaces. The SEM and EDS results showed that the homogeneity and amount of contaminants, such as sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, chloride and sulphur are bigger in the high pressure compressor blade surfaces than in the low pressure compressor blade surface. The EIS results showed that the degradation process in turbine compressor blades increases with the temperature and pressure increase inside the compressors and depends of the blade composition. The low pressure compressor blade, which was made of a Ti base superalloy exhibited smaller corrosion resistance (smallest charge transfer resistance value (Rct)) than the two high pressure compressor blades, which were made of a Fe base superalloy. However, despite of its lower resistance to corrosion, after 5,000 hours of service, the low pressure compressor blade did not present pitting corrosion while the high pressure compressor blades did.


2019 ◽  
Vol 123 (1260) ◽  
pp. 230-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. Beirow ◽  
A. Kühhorn ◽  
F. Figaschewsky ◽  
P. Hönisch ◽  
T. Giersch ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTIn order to prepare an advanced 4-stage high-pressure compressor rig test campaign, details regarding both accomplishment and analysis of preliminary experiments are provided in this paper. The superior objective of the research project is to contribute to a reliable but simultaneously less conservative design of future high pressure blade integrated disks (blisk). It is planned to achieve trend-setting advances based on a close combination of both numerical and experimental analyses. The analyses are focused on the second rotor of this research compressor, which is the only one being manufactured as blisk. The comprehensive test program is addressing both surge and forced response analyses e.g. caused by low engine order excitation. Among others the interaction of aeroelastics and blade mistuning is demanding attention in this regard. That is why structural models are needed, allowing for an accurate forced response prediction close to reality. Furthermore, these models are required to support the assessment of blade tip timing (BTT) data gathered in the rig tests and strain gauge (s/g) data as well. To gain the maximum information regarding the correlation between BTT data, s/g-data and pressure gauge data, every blade of the second stage rotor (28 blades) is applied with s/g. However, it is well known that s/g on blades can contribute additional mistuning that had to be considered upon updating structural models.Due to the relevance of mistuning, efforts are made for its accurate experimental determination. Blade-by-blade impact tests according to a patented approach are used for this purpose. From the research point of view, it is most interesting to determine both the effect s/g-instrumentation and assembling the compressor stages on blade frequency mistuning. That is why experimental mistuning tests carried out immediately after manufacturing the blisk are repeated twice, namely, after s/g instrumentation and after assembling. To complete the pre-test program, the pure mechanical damping and modal damping ratios dependent on the ambient pressure are experimentally determined inside a pressure vessel. Subsequently the mistuning data gained before is used for updating subset of nominal system mode (SNM) models. Aerodynamic influence coefficients (AICs) are implemented to take aeroelastic interaction into account for forced response analyses. Within a comparison of different models, it is shown for the fundamental flap mode (1F) that the s/g instrumentation significantly affects the forced response, whereas the impact of assembling the compressor plays a minor role.


2019 ◽  
Vol 141 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Hanschke ◽  
Arnold Kühhorn ◽  
Sven Schrape ◽  
Thomas Giersch

Objective of this paper is to analyze the consequences of borescope blending repairs on the aeroelastic behavior of a modern high pressure compressor (HPC) blisk. To investigate the blending consequences in terms of aerodynamic damping and forcing changes, a generic blending of a rotor blade is modeled. Steady-state flow parameters like total pressure ratio, polytropic efficiency, and the loss coefficient are compared. Furthermore, aerodynamic damping is computed utilizing the aerodynamic influence coefficient (AIC) approach for both geometries. Results are confirmed by single passage flutter (SPF) simulations for specific interblade phase angles (IBPA) of interest. Finally, a unidirectional forced response analysis for the nominal and the blended rotor is conducted to determine the aerodynamic force exciting the blade motion. The frequency content as well as the forcing amplitudes is obtained from Fourier transformation of the forcing signal. As a result of the present analysis, the change of the blade vibration amplitude is computed.


2020 ◽  
pp. 12-19
Author(s):  
Nikolay Shuvaev ◽  
◽  
Aleksandr Siner ◽  
Ruslan Kolegov ◽  
◽  
...  

Ensuring safety of flights is the most important task that is being solved in the process of designing an aircraft engine and aircraft. The most complex are the physical processes occurring inside the aircraft engine, especially in its gas generator: combustion chamber, high-pressure compressor and high-pressure turbine. The unsteady flow of gas in the flow duct of the aircraft engine is very complex, it is difficult to model, because the flow is characterized by a wide range of time and space scales. Unsteady flow in a high-pressure compressor can cause surge and breakdown of the compressor and the entire engine as a whole. Along with the detachment flows causing the surge, in the flow duct there can be resonant phenomena associated with the propagation of powerful sound waves along the flow duct of the engine, which, when a direct and reflected wave is imposed, create a very powerful standing wave that affects the structure. With a certain combination of conditions, the coincidence of the natural frequencies of the oscillations of the air volume and the solid body, such resonant processes in the flow duct of the gas turbine engine can lead to serious breakdowns, such as breakage of rotor blades and guide vanes, destruction of the aeroengine framework and other. The main difficulty is that it is problematic to identify such processes at the design and debugging stage, since there are no suitable mathematical models, and for experimental verification it is required to withstand the specific operating conditions of the node that are not known in advance. This work is devoted to the creation of a calculation technique that will allow in the future to diagnose resonance phenomena at the design stage and thereby significantly reduce the costs for the design, testing and manufacture of an aircraft engine. The proposed technique is based on the nonstationary Navier-Stokes equations for a compressible gas.


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