A study on design optimization for compressor blisks

Bladed disks are important components of gas turbine engine. Rotor disk spool drum assemblies of gas turbine engine constitute 20–25% of total engine weight. Increasing thrust-to-weight ratio and engine life is paramount for designers. Blisk reduces significantly weight of rotor, compared against conventional disks for aero engines. This paper brings out specific challenges faced while re-designing bladed disk into blisks including structural integrity aspects under various operating loads. This paper presents a case study on re-design of typical compressor bladed disk into a blisk, without changing the flow path or airfoil configuration, within space constraints. Weight reduction of rotor disk is carried out using shape optimization technique. Blisk configuration is derived from existing bladed disk general arrangement. This paper describes methodology of weight optimization of blisk using ‘HyperStudy’ tool considering static and dynamic 3D models with ANSYS solver. APDL fatigue life macro is developed for fatigue life prediction, using strain-life approach. In this paper 3D bladed disk, baseline and optimized 3D blisk modal analyses results are used to ensure minimum interferences for engine operating conditions. The developed methodology for optimization can be appreciated by significant weight reduction (30%), while meeting design criteria and increased fatigue life.

Mobile Interface CMS Method for Vibration Characteristics Prediction of Mistuned Bladed Disk with Different Coupling Degrees

The prediction of vibration characteristics was studied in the mistuned bladed disk by the mobile interface prestressed component mode synthesis (CMS) superelement method. When the strongly, generally, and weakly coupling in the mistuned bladed disk, according to the results of the direct FEM method, the prediction accuracy of this method was verified and compared with the fixed-interface CMS method by using the relative error of dynamic frequency, vibration mode matching function, and dimensionless root mean square error of vibration amplitudes. It is pointed that for mistuned bladed disk in the strong coupling, the prediction accuracy of dynamic frequency and vibration amplitudes are higher by the mobile interface CMS method and the vibration modes are matched with the direct method. In weak coupling, the results of dynamic frequency and vibration modes predicted by the mobile interface CMS method and the fixed-interface CMS method are consistent with the direct method, but the vibration amplitudes’ prediction error of the mobile interface CMS method is lower than that of the fixed-interface CMS method. In general coupling, the mobile interface CMS method has higher dynamic frequency prediction accuracy at low order, and the two methods have comparable dynamic frequency prediction accuracy at high order. The vibration modes predicted by the two methods are matched with the direct FEM method, and the prediction accuracy of vibration amplitude by the mobile interface CMS method is better than that of the fixed-interface CMS method. The results indicate that the mobile interface CMS method could more accurately predict vibration characteristics of the mistuned bladed disk with different coupling degrees and could be an effective measurement for studying the vibration characteristics of the mistuned bladed disk system.

Effect of Intentional Mistuning on Dynamic Characteristics of a Energy Turbomachine Bladed Disk

In this article the effect intentional mistuning of an axial turbomachine bladed disk has been analyzed in order to reduce forced response due to low-order engine excitation. The maximum value of forced response of turbomachine rotor’s blades with mistuning parameters is usually much more than the value of the tuned rotors. An increase level mistuning of this critical value actually leads to a decrease magnifications of the forced response. Thus, the actual work has been introducing some degree of intentional mistuning in the design to achieve these purposes. The effectiveness of intentional mistuning has been researched at the design stage of the bladed disk in the energy turbomachines, which is introduced into the rotor’s design by changing the nominal mass of the blades in harmonic models.

Dry Friction Interblade Damping by 3D FEM Modelling of Bladed Disk: HPC Calculations Compared with Experiment

Interblade contacts and damping evaluation of the turbine bladed wheel with prestressed dry friction contacts are solved by the 3D finite element method with the surface-to-surface dry friction contact model. This makes it possible to model the space relative motions of contact pairs that occur during blade vibrations. To experimentally validate the model, a physical model of the bladed wheel with tie-boss couplings was built and tested. HPC computation with a proposed strategy was used to lower the computational time of the nonlinear solution of the wheel resonant attenuation used for damping estimation. Comparison of experimental and numerical results of damping estimation yields a very good agreement.

Accurate Interpolation of the Dependency of Modal Properties On the Rotation Speed for the Transient Response Analysis of Bladed Disks

During fast gas-turbine engine acceleration and deceleration the transient vibration effects in bladed disk vibration become significant and the transient response has to be calculated. In this paper an effective method is developed for efficient calculations of the transient vibration response for mistuned bladed disks under varying rotation speeds. The method uses the large-scale finite element modelling of the bladed disks allowing the accurate description of the dynamic properties of the mistuned bladed disks. The effects of the varying rotation speed on the natural frequencies and mode shapes of a mistuned bladed disk and its effects on the amplitude and the spectral composition of the loading are considered. The dependency of the modal characteristics on the rotation speed are based on the evaluation of these characteristics at reference points followed by the interpolation to obtain values at any rotation speed from the operating range. A new method has been developed for the interpolation of mode shapes while preserving the orthogonality and mass-normalization of the mode shapes. The method of mode shape interpolation is elaborated for tuned and mistuned bladed disks. The accuracy and efficiency of the method is demonstrated on test examples and on analysis of transient forced response of realistic bladed discs.

Study on the Coupled Vibration Characteristics of a Two-Stage Bladed Disk Rotor System

This paper conducts a coupled vibration analysis of a two-stage bladed disk rotor system. According to the finite element method, the bladed disk rotor system is established. The substructure modal synthesis super-element method (SMSM) with a fixed interface and free interface is presented to obtain the vibration behaviors of the rotor system. Then, the free vibration results are compared with the ones calculated by the cyclic symmetry analysis method to validate the analysis in this paper. The results show that the modes of the two-stage bladed disk not only include the modes of the first- and second-stage bladed disk, but also the coupled modes of the two-stage bladed disk.

Self-adaptive macroslip array for friction force prediction in contact interfaces with non-conforming meshes

The steady-state nonlinear forced response (NFR) of finite element (FE) models with friction joints is usually computed in the frequency domain through the combination of node-to-node contact elements and the Harmonic Balance Method (HBM). In the current state of the art, rare are the cases where the friction forces are estimated for contact interfaces with non-conforming mesh grids. This need is nowadays taking place due to the improving capability of commercial FE software to manage any kind of boundary condition (i.e., either coupling or contact), without requiring coincident pairs of nodes at the joint interfaces. Such an advantage becomes a drawback when the analysts are requested to investigate the NFR of the assembly by using build-in codes, where the contact forces prediction usually requires node-to-node contact elements whose parameters (i.e., the contact stiffnesses and friction coefficients) can be easily identified by means of experiments. This paper addresses the mentioned limitation, and proposes a novel self-adaptive macroslip array (SAMA) model for the estimation of the nonlinear friction forces on FE contact interfaces with non-conforming meshes. The SAMA model consists on a set of node-to-node contact elements ordered in parallel, whose contact parameters and normal preloads are identified through a step-by-step self-adaptive weighting algorithm that depends on the topology of the meshes in contact. The goodness of the proposed model is assessed on the calculation of the NFR of a bladed disk with shroud contacts, under the hypotheses of cyclic symmetry and HBM. The nonlinear dynamic behavior of the bladed disk is evaluated in two different cases. First, in the case of lack of node-to-node congruence at the contact interface for the structure being in its undeformed configuration, and second, in the case of a relevant static misalignment of the contact interfaces due to the application of large static loads.

Investigation on the Robustness of Rotor/Stator Contact Interactions with Respect to Small Mistuning

In this work, the impact of small mistuning on rotor/stator contact interactions is investigated. First, a detailed study of a rotor/stator interaction between the first bending modes and the second engine order is presented in the tuned case. Then, a numerical investigation on the effect of mistuning on the studied rotor/stator contact interaction is carried out. In particular, a stochastic analysis is performed to evaluate the robustness of the interaction with respect to the mistuning level. Simulations are conducted using a reduced order model (ROM) of an industrial bladed disk that combines both physical degrees of freedom (along blades tip for contact treatment) and modal coordinates. Mistuning is introduced in the tuned ROM by means of a modified version of the component mode mistuning method that allows to keep physical degrees of freedom within the reduced basis. Nonlinear amplification factors, i.e. the amplification factors in the context of contact nonlinearities, are compared with their linear counterparts, the latter are computed using a linear forcing on each blade using a two nodal diameters traveling wave excitation on the mistuned and the tuned bladed disk. The comparison between the linear and nonlinear amplification factor for each sample highlights that no correlation exists between a mistuning pattern leading to high amplifications in a linear context or when contact nonlinearities are taken into account. Therefore, dedicated analyses on the effect of mistuning should be undertaken with contact nonlinearities considerations at the design stage especially if intentional mistuning is considered.