Friction-induced traveling wave coupling in tuned bladed-disks

Flutter is a major constraint on modern turbomachines; as the designs move toward more slender, thinner, and loaded blades, they become more prone to experience high cycle fatigue problems. Dry friction, present at the root attachment for cantilever configurations, is one of the main sources of energy dissipation. It saturates the flutter vibration amplitude growth, producing a limit cycle oscillation whose amplitude depends on the balance between the energy injected and dissipated by the system. Both phenomena, flutter and friction, typically produce a small correction of the purely elastic response of the structure. A large number of elastic cycles is required to notice their effect, which appears as a slow modulation of the oscillation amplitude. Furthermore, even longer time scales appear when multiple traveling waves are aerodynamically unstable and exhibit similar growth rates. All these slow scales make the system time integration very stiff and CPU expensive, bringing some doubts about whether the final solutions are properly converged. In order to avoid these uncertainties, a numerical continuation procedure is applied to analyze the solutions that set in, their traveling wave content, their bifurcations and their stability. The system is modeled using an asymptotic reduced order model and the continuation results are validated against direct time integrations. New final states with multiple traveling wave content are found and analyzed. These solutions have not been obtained before for the case of microslip friction at the blade attachment; only solutions consisting of a single traveling wave have been reported in previous works.

A Comparison of Two Microslip Contact Models for Studying the Mechanics of Underplatform Dampers

In turbine blade systems, under-platform dampers are widely used to attenuate excessive resonant vibrations. Subjected to vibration excitation, the components with frictionally constrained interfaces can involve very complex contact kinematics induced by tangential and normal relative motions. To effectively calculate the dynamics of a blade-damper system, contact models which can accurately reproduce the interface normal and tangential motions are required. The large majority of works have been developed using macroslip friction models to model the friction damping at the contact interface. However, for those cases with small tangential displacement where high normal loads are applied, macroslip models are not enough to give accurate results. In this paper two recently published microslip models are compared, between them and against the simple macroslip spring-slider model. The aim is to find to which extent these models can accurately predict damper mechanics. One model is the so called GG array, where an array of macroslip elements is used. Each macroslip element of the GG array is assigned its own contact parameters and for each of them four parameters are needed: normal stiffness, tangential stiffness, normal gap and friction coefficient. The other one is a novel continuous microslip friction model. The model is based on a modification of the original classic IWAN model to couple normal and tangential contact loads. Like the GG array the model needs normal and tangential stiffness, and friction coefficient. Unlike the GG array the model is continuous and, instead of the normal gap required by the GG array, the Modified IWAN model needs a preload value. The two models are here applied to the study of the mechanics of a laboratory under-platform damper test rig. The results from the two models are compared and allow their difference, both for damper mechanics and for the complex-spring coefficients, to be assessed.

Modelling of Mechanical Systems With Friction Interfaces Considering Variable Normal Contact Load and Tangential Micro/Macro Slip

Mechanical structures with frictionally constrained interfaces often involve complex contact kinematics induced by tangential and normal relative motions. The tangential motion induces stick-micro/macro slip friction and causes energy dissipation. The normal motion induces normal load variation and possible separation of the joint interfaces. For effective analysis of dynamics of jointed structures, a reduced friction contact model is needed to characterize the nonlinear, coupled normal and tangential contact behaviors precisely. However, most developed microslip friction contact models considers only constant normal load. In this paper, an improved microslip friction model with normal load variation induced by normal motion is proposed. The tangential stick-micro/macro slip friction is modeled by continuous Iwan hysteretic model. This model is characterized by a slippage uniform distribution density function and a linear stiffness at stick state. The coupling relationship between tangential nonlinear restoring force and normal load variation is built. This leads to generalization of the original Iwan hysteretic friction model to consider the effect of variable normal load. The proposed model is applied to model a 7-dofs frictional damping experimental system. The results show that normal load variation and tangential microslip motion exert an important effect on prediction of friction contact behaviors. The proposed model is capable of generating asymmetric hysteresis loops and intermittent normal separation. The numerical simulation fit well with the experimental results for the 7-dofs frictional damping system, which validates the effectiveness and accuracy of the proposed model.

Frictional Damping of Flutter: Microslip Versus Macroslip

Friction dampers are utilized in turbomachinery to reduce blade vibrations resulting from aeroelastic interactions. In this paper, the microslip friction model is applied to a blade with blade to ground damper and subjected to negative damping. Analysis using the describing function method, also known as the method of harmonic balance, is used to identify the behavior of the system and the maximum negative damping that can be stabilized by such a damper. These results are compared to those for the macroslip friction model.

Frictional Damping of Flutter: Microslip Versus Macroslip

Friction dampers are utilized in turbomachinery to reduce blade vibrations resulting from aeroelastic interactions. In this paper, the microslip friction model is applied to a blade with blade to ground damper and subjected to negative damping. Analysis using the describing function method, also known as the method of harmonic balance, is used to identify the behavior of the system and the maximum negative damping that can be stabilized by such a damper. These results are compared to those for the macroslip friction model.

Experimental Study on Dry Friction Damping Characteristics of the Steam Turbine Blade Material with Nonconforming Contacts

An experiment system has been established to study the dry friction damping dynamic characteristics of the steam turbine blade material 1Cr13. The friction dynamic characteristics of the specimens with nonconforming contact surfaces are measured under different parameters. The experiment results are compared with that of the macroslip hysteresis model and the Mindlin microslip friction model in detail. The results show that the experimental result of the tangential contact stiffness is in good agreement with that of the theory result based on the fractal theory and the Hertz contact theory by Jiang et al., 2009. The dimensionless equivalent stiffness and equivalent damping obtained by the macroslip hysteresis model agree well with the experimental results when relative motion is relatively large. However, the results of the macroslip hysteresis model differ a lot from the experimental results when relative motion is relatively small. Compared with the macroslip hysteresis model, the Mindlin microslip friction model can predict the dimensionless equivalent stiffness and equivalent damping accurately during the whole measurement range. The linear regularities of dimensionless equivalent stiffness and equivalent damping are obtained, which decrease the difficulty of building the vibration analysis model of the blade with sufficient accuracy.

Response Prediction of Frictionally Constraint Blade Systems Based on a Variable Normal Load Microslip Model

A discrete microslip friction contact model, which can consider time-dependent/space-related normal load, has been established to investigate the contact kinematics in the contact interfaces between adjacent blade shrouds. The model extends the capability of Csaba’s model in dealing with the situation of variant normal load. A Fast Anti-alias Fourier transform (FAFT) is introduced to the alternating frequency/time domain method (AFT) to improve the accuracy of spectrum analysis and extend analysis spectrum range. The developed friction model and the modified AFT are applied to calculate nonlinear vibration for a simplified shrouded blade, and the effect of parameters on resonant frequency and amplitude of shrouded blade are investigated and discussed. Comparing with existing variable normal load macroslip model, the model proposed here has the mathematically tractable characteristic and can be easily used. Combining with the AFT method, it is suitable for the analysis of complex system with multiple variables and degrees of freedom, and it can meet the engineering need.

Friction Damping Modeling in High Stress Contact Areas Using Microslip Friction Model

It is well known that friction is really important to reduce amplitudes of vibration of rotor blades. Underplatform dampers are a common solution for introducing friction damping, but there are also other friction damping sources on blades that are produced in places with high normal loads and small relative displacements (e.g. lockplates and blade-disc joints). Several approaches based on the classical Coulomb friction law have been used in order to model the friction damping at those interfaces, but their results are not accurate enough for those cases with small displacements where high normal loads appear. This paper presents simulations of typical cases of friction on rotor blades (underplatform dampers, lockplates and blade root) using a method based on macroslip and the method developed by ‘Industria de TurboPropulsores’ (ITP) based on microslip (InTerPart MIcroslip COntact method), and their comparison with experimental results obtained with several tests performed at Imperial College London (IC). The comparison shows that, for cases with high normal loads and small displacements, the ITPMICO method obtains further more accurate results than based-on-macroslip one.