Felix Figaschewsky

Design and Analysis of an Intentional Mistuning Experiment Reducing Flutter Susceptibility and Minimizing Forced Response of a Jet Engine Fan

Recent demands for a reduction of specific fuel consumption of jet engines have been opposed by increasing propulsive efficiency with higher bypass ratios and increased engine sizes. At the same time the challenge for the engine development is to design safe and efficient fan blades of high aspect ratios. Since the fan is the very first rotor stage, it experiences significant distortions in the incoming flow depending on the operating conditions. Flow distortions do not only lead to a performance and stall margin loss but also to remarkable low engine order (LEO) excitation responsible for forced vibrations of fundamental modes. Additionally, fans of jet engines typically suffer from stall flutter, which can be additionally amplified by reflections of acoustic pressure waves at the intake. Stall flutter appears before approaching the stall line on the fan’s characteristic and limits its stable operating range. Despite the fact that this “flutter bite” usually affects only a very narrow speed range, it reduces the overall margin of safe operation significantly. With increasing aspect ratios of ultra-high bypass ratio jet engines the flutter susceptibility will probably increase further and emphasizes the importance of considering aeromechanical analyses early in the design phase of future fans. This paper aims at proving that intentional mistuning is able to remove the flutter bite of modern jet engine fans without raising issues due to heavily increased forced vibrations induced by LEO excitation. Whereas intentional mistuning is an established technology in mitigating flutter, it is also known to amplify the forced response. However, recent investigations considering aeroelastic coupling revealed that under specific circumstances mistuning can also reduce the forced response due to engine order excitation. In order to allow a direct comparison and to limit costs as well as effort at the same time, the intentional mistuning is introduced in a non-destructive way by applying heavy paint to the blades. Its impact on the blade’s natural frequencies is estimated via finite element models with an additional paint layer. In parallel, this procedure is experimentally verified with painted fan blades in the laboratory. A validated SNM (subset of nominal system modes) representation of the fan is used as a computational model to characterize its mistuned vibration behavior. Its validation is done by comparing mistuned mode shape envelopes and frequencies of an experimental modal analysis at rest with those obtained by the updated computational model. In order to find a mistuning pattern minimizing the forced response of mode 1 and 2 at the same time and satisfying stability and imbalance constraints, a multi-objective optimization has been carried out. Finally, the beneficial properties of the optimized mistuning pattern are verified in a rig test of the painted rotor. Copyright

Forced Response Prediction of an Axial Turbine Rotor With Regard to Aerodynamically Mistuned Excitation

The design of both efficient and reliable turbomachinery blades demands a detailed knowledge of static and dynamic forces during operation.This paper aims to contribute to the proper identification of dynamic excitation mechanisms acting on an axial turbine rotor, particularly with regard to deviations of the NGV’s nominal geometry due to the use of variable vanes or tolerances in manufacturing.As variations of the NGV’s geometry disturb the perfectly periodic pattern of the downstream flow features, other spectral components than those correlated with the number of stator vanes are possible to appear. These frequency components may lead to low engine order excitation of fundamental blade modes at high engine speeds. Under these operating conditions the rotor is already highly loaded with centrifugal forces and additional dynamic excitation may cause unacceptable stresses.Thus aerodynamic mistuning might be a limiting criterion for the design of a highly loaded turbine rotor.Within this paper 2 dimensional CFD-models are used to investigate both, the determination of the wake of a geometric mistuned stator guide vane and the influence of the resulting excitation on the adjacent rotor stage due to aerodynamically mistuned flow. In order to generate a mistuned NGV geometry, variations of pitch and stagger angle are taken into account and a mesh morpher is used to produce computational domains of the mistuned geometry on the basis of a nominal mesh.Additionally a simplified reconstruction process based on a set of CFD computations will be introduced, being able to reproduce the spectral components of the mistuned wake by specifying a certain geometric mistuning distribution.The prediction of the resulting modal forces is carried out in time domain and approaches with lower fidelity are investigated with respect to their capability of reproducing the key features of an aerodynamically mistuned excitation mechanism.Copyright

Analysis of Mistuned Blade Vibrations Based on Normally Distributed Blade Individual Natural Frequencies

With increasing demands for reliability of modern turbomachinery blades the quantification of uncertainty and its impact on the designed product has become an important part of the development process. This paper aims to contribute to an improved approximation of expected vibration amplitudes of a mistuned rotor assembly under certain assumptions on the probability distribution of the blade’s natural frequencies. A previously widely used lumped mass model is employed to represent the vibrational behavior of a cyclic symmetric structure. Aerodynamic coupling of the blades is considered based on the concept of influence coefficients leading to individual damping of the traveling wave modes. The natural frequencies of individual rotor blades are assumed to be normal distributed and the required variance could be estimated due to experiences with the applied manufacturing process. Under these conditions it is possible to derive the probability distribution of the off-diagonal terms in the mistuned equations of motions, that are responsible for the coupling of different circumferential modes. Knowing these distributions recent limits on the maximum attainable mistuned vibration amplitude are improved. The improvement is achieved due to the fact, that the maximum amplification depends on the mistuning strength. This improved limit can be used in the development process, as it could partly replace probabilistic studies with surrogate models of reduced order. The obtained results are verified with numerical simulations of the underlying structural model with random mistuning patterns based on a normal distribution of individual blade frequencies.Copyright

Effect of Mistuning and Damping on the Forced Response of a Compressor Blisk Rotor

The forced response of an E3E-type high pressure compressor blisk front rotor is analyzed with regard to intentional mistuning and its robustness towards additional random mistuning. Both a chosen alternating mistuning pattern and artificial mistuning patterns optimized concerning the forced response are considered. Focusing on three different blade modes, subset of nominal system mode-based reduced order models are employed to compute the forced response. The disk remains unchanged while the Young’s modulus of each blade is used to define the particular mistuning pattern. The well established aerodynamic influence coefficient technique is employed to model aeroelastic coupling and hence to consider the strongly mode- and inter blade phase angle-dependent aerodynamic damping contribution.It has been found that a reduction of the maximum forced response beyond that of the tuned reference can be achieved for particular mistuning patterns and all modes considered. This implies an exciting engine order which would cause a low nodal diameter mode in case of a tuned blisk. At best a nearly 50% reduction of maximum response magnitudes is computed for the fundamental bending mode and large mistuning. The solution proved to be robust towards additional random mistuning of reasonable magnitude, which is of particular interest with regard to a potential technical realization. In case of small mistuning as assumed for the first torsion and the longitudinal bending mode the advantage of achieving response magnitudes beyond the tuned reference gets lost indeed, if random mistuning is superimposed. However, mostly a lower response level is calculated compared to responses obtained from models adjusted to mistuning determined by experiment.© 2015 ASME

A SEMI-UNSTRUCTURED TURBOMACHINERY MESHING LIBRARY WITH FOCUS ON MODELING OF SPECIFIC GEOMETRICAL FEATURES

Computational Fluid Dynamics is widely used for the analysis and the design of turbomachinery blade rows. A well established method is the application of semi-unstructured meshes, that uses a combination of structured meshes in the radial direction and unstructured meshes in the axial as well as the tangential direction. This takes advantage of the approximately two dimensional flow field through the blade rows, whereby a fine radial discretization, excepting the near wall region, is not necessary. Otherwise, it is possible to discretize particular regions, e.g. the leading and trailing edge regions, in the axial and tangential direction without generating unnecessary nodes in the far field. The meshing approach is based on the projection of a two dimensional unstructured mesh defined at a reference surface. Once, the two dimensional mesh is generated the projection is achieved by transfinite interpolation from the reference surface to further radial surfaces using a structured mesh. Due to the modeling of geometrical features, especially fillets, advanced methods for the generation of structured meshes and mesh smoothing algorithms are required. The paper presents two different approaches for the generation of an appropriate structured mesh. The first is based on the solution of elliptic partial differential equations. The second approach is based on the split of the domain into fourteen appropriately arranged blocks. Furthermore, two smoothing methods for two dimensional unstructured meshes, a constrained Laplace smoothing and an optimization based approach, are presented. Regarding a more realistic representation of the geometry, methods for the modeling of cavities, variable clearance sizes and fillets are presented. Finally, a comparison of the smoothing techniques applied to a rotor passage is presented and the influence of chosen geometrical features on the flow solution is evaluated.

Numerical Analysis and Validation of the Rotor Blade Vibration Response Induced by High Pressure Compressor Deep Surge

The following paper presents a numerical analysis of a deep surge cycle of a 4.5 stage research compressor. The resulting unsteady loads are used to determine the response of two particular rotor blade rows that are then compared to strain gauge data from measurements. Within a deep surge cycle the compressor experiences a rapid change of the flow field from forward to reversed flow. This rapid breakdown is linked to a new mean blade load. Hence, the rapid change in blade loads are able to excite fundamental blade modes similar to an impulse load. The resulting vibration magnitudes might reach critical levels. This paper demonstrates two different approaches to evaluate the unsteady flow during a surge cycle.The first uses a three dimensional, time accurate finite volume solver for viscid compressible flows to calculate the transient surge cycle of the compressor. The compressor itself is represented by a multi-blade-row sector model. The second approach makes use of the same solver and compressor domain to determine steady state characteristics of the HPC in forward, stalled and reversed flow. Based on these characteristics an one dimensional finite volume solver for inviscid compressible flows was developed to determine the transient compressor behavior. The one dimensional solver represents the compressor by source terms that are linked to the previously determined steady state characteristics.Copyright