Investigation of Structurally and Aerodynamically Mistuned Oscillating Cascade Using Fully-Coupled Method

There seems to be a lack of clear and systematic understanding of physical behaviour and mechanisms of mistuned bladerows, particularly in the context of the aerodynamic mistuning versus the structural (frequency) mistuning. A high-fidelity fully-coupled method is desirable to investigate the vibration characteristics of aeroelasticity problems with strong fluid-structure interaction effects, as well as blade mistuning effects. In the present work, the direct nonlinear time-domain fully-coupled method is adopted to investigate the dynamics mechanism of a mistuned oscillating cascade. The main objectives are two-folds, firstly to elucidate the basic vibration characteristics of a mistuned bladerow, and secondly to examine the aeroelastic effects of mistuning. Three conditions of interest are considered: a) the structural mistuning only, b) the aerodynamic mistuning only, and c) a combination of the two. The present results show that firstly a mistuned configuration tends to vibrate with the same frequency and a predominantly constant inter-blade phase-angle. Vibration amplitudes of the blades vary significantly with a strong mode localization effect for the structural mistuning. For the concurrent structural-aerodynamic mistuning, the localization is stronger than in the standalone structural mistuning case. Secondly, a monotonic increase of the aeroelastic stability with the structural mistuning magnitude is observed. On the other hand, the aerodynamically mistuned cascade shows a stabilizing effect with a small amount of mistuning but exhibits a destabilizing effect with a large mistuning. Furthermore... see paper for the full abstract

Parametric whirl flutter study using different modelling approaches

This paper demonstrates the importance of assessing the whirl flutter stability of propeller configurations with a detailed aeroelastic model instead of local pylon models. Especially with the growing use of electric motors for propulsion in air taxis and commuter aircraft whirl flutter becomes an important mode of instability. These configurations often include propeller which are powered by lightweight electric motors and located at remote locations, e.g. the wing tip. This gives rise to an aeroelastic instability called whirl flutter, involving the gyroscopic whirl modes of the engine. The driving parameters for this instability are the dynamics of the mounting structure. Using a generic whirl flutter model of a propeller at the tip of a lifting surface, parameter studies on the flutter stability are carried out. The aeroelastic model consists of a dynamic MSC.Nastran beam model coupled with the unsteady ZAERO ZONA6 aerodynamic model and strip theory for the propeller aerodynamics. The parameter studies focus on the influence of different substructures (ranging from local engine mount stiffness to global aircraft dynamics) on the aeroelastic stability of the propeller. The results show a strong influence of the level of detail of the aeroelastic model on the flutter behaviour. The coupling with the lifting surface is of major importance, as it can stabilise the whirl flutter mode. Including wing unsteady aerodynamics into the analysis can also change the whirl flutter behaviour. This stresses the importance of including whirl flutter in the aeroelastic stability analysis on aircraft level.