Mehdi Vahdati

An Integrated Time-Domain Aeroelasticity Model for the Prediction of Fan Forced Response due to Inlet Distortion

The forced response of a low aspect-ratio transonic fan due to different inlet distortions was predicted using an integrated time-domain aeroelasticity model. A time-accurate, nonlinear viscous, unsteady flow representation was coupled to a linear modal model obtained from a standard finite element formulation. The predictions were checked against the results obtained from a previous experimental program known as Augmented Damping of Low-aspect-ratio Fans (ADLARF). Unsteady blade surface pressures, due to inlet distortions created by screens mounted in the intake inlet duct, were measured along a streamline at 85 percent blade span. Three resonant conditions, namely 1F/3EO, IT & 2F/8EO and 2S/8EO, were considered. Both the amplitude and the phase of the unsteady pressure fluctuations were predicted with and without the blade flexibility. The actual blade displacements and the amount of aerodynamic damping were also computed for the former case. A whole-assembly mesh with about 2,000,000 points was used in some of the computations. Although there were some uncertainties about the aerodynamic boundary conditions, the overall agreement between the experimental and predicted results was found to be reasonably good. The inclusion of the blade motion was shown to have an effect on the unsteady pressure distribution, especially for the 2F/1T case. It was concluded that a full representation of the blade forced response phenomenon should include this feature.

On the Use of Atmospheric Boundary Conditions for Axial-Flow Compressor Stall Simulations

This paper describes a novel way of prescribing computational fluid dynamics (CFD) boundary conditions for axial-flow compressors. The approach is based on extending the standard single passage computational domain by adding an intake upstream and a variable nozzle downstream. Such a route allows us to consider any point on a given speed characteristic by simply modifying the nozzle area, the actual boundary conditions being set to atmospheric ones in all cases. Using a fan blade, it is shown that the method not only allows going past the stall point but also captures the typical hysteresis loop behavior of compressors.

Unsteady Flow and Aeroelasticity Behavior of Aeroengine Core Compressors During Rotating Stall and Surge

This paper will focus on two core-compressor instabilities, namely, rotating stall and surge. Using a 3D viscous time-accurate flow representation, the front bladerows of a core compressor were modeled in a whole-annulus fashion whereas the rest of bladerows were represented in single-passage fashion. The rotating stall behavior at two different compressor operating points was studied by considering two different variable-vane scheduling conditions for which experimental data were available. Using a model with nine whole bladerows, the unsteady flow calculations were conducted on 32 CPUs of a parallel cluster, typical run times being around 3-4 weeks for a grid with about 60 X 10 6 points. The simulations were conducted over several engine rotations. As observed on the actual development engine, there was no rotating stall for the first scheduling condition while malscheduling of the stator vanes created a 12-band rotating stall which excited the rotor blade first flap mode. In a separate set of calculations, the surge behavior was modeled using a time-accurate single-passage representation of the core compressor. It was possible to predict not only flow reversal into the low pressure compression domain but also the expected hysteresis pattern of the surge loop in terms of its mass flow versus pressure characteristic.

Validation of Numerical Simulation for Rotating Stall in a Transonic Fan

This paper addresses a comparison of numerical stall simulations with experimental data at 60% (subsonic) and 95% (supersonic) of the design speed in a modern transonic fan rig. The unsteady static pressures were obtained with high frequency Kulite transducers mounted on the casing upstream and downstream of the fan. The casing pressure variation was clearly visible in the measurements when a stall cell passed below the transducers. Numerical stall simulations were conducted using an implicit, time-accurate, 3D compressible Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) solver. The comparisons between the experiment and simulation mainly cover performance curves and time-domain pressure traces of Kulites during rotating stall. At two different fan speeds, the stall characteristics such as the number and rotating speed of the stall cells were well-matched to the experimental values. The mass flow rate and the loading parameter under the fully-developed rotating stall also showed good agreement with the experiment. In both the numerical and experimental results, a large stall cell was eventually formed after stall inception regardless of the fan speed. Based on the validation, the detailed flow has been evaluated to understand rotating stall in a transonic fan. In addition, it was found that the mass flow measurement using casing static pressure might be wrong during transient flow if the Kulites were mounted too close to the fan blade.

Computational Study of Intake Duct Effects on Fan Flutter Stability

A detailed e utter analysis is presented of a civil aeroengine fan assembly using an integrated three-dimensional aeroelasticity model. Two different intake ducts are considered. The e rst one is a straight duct, the geometry of whichisrepresentativeoftestrigintakes.Thesecondductisanaxisymmetricversionofthee ightintake.Duringthe e rst phase of the study, a series of e utter analyses was conducted for the 60 ‐80% speed range. Each computation was performed at a single point along the speed characteristic by following an elevated working line that was near the expected e utter boundary. As routinely observed in rig tests, the e utter stability was predicted to drop sharply forsome very narrow speedranges, but thebehaviorwasfound to bemarkedly differentforeach individual intake. To gain further understanding of the intake effects, a large number of calculations were undertaken for thesecond intake alone. An assumed pressure perturbation, due a rotating fan assembly vibrating in a given nodal diameter mode, was imposed at the duct exit. The propagation of this perturbation was monitored at a number of stations along the duct. The cases studied were chosen to cover the combinations of speeds and nodal diameters for which theearlierfanassembly plusintakecalculationshad predictede utter.Itwasshownthat, foragiven nodaldiameter assembly mode, instabilities occurred when the perturbation frequency was sufe ciently close to the duct’ s cuton frequency in theregion closeto thefan.Such a e nding suggeststhat fan e utterand intakeductacoustics arerelated in an integral fashion. Flutter will occur when the pressure perturbation due to fan rotation and blade vibration match, both in frequency and shape, an acoustic mode of the intake.

Aeroelastic stability analysis of a bird-damaged aeroengine fan assembly

Bird strike is a major consideration when designing fan blades for large-diameter aeroengines. Current methods rely on impact tests and structural optimisation but it is highly desirable to have predictive numerical models to assess the aerodynamic and aeroelastic stability of bird-damaged fan assemblies. The aim of this paper is to present such a methodology and to study a representative case. The particular fan assembly under investigation contained two consecutive blades with unequal impact damage, the so-called heavy-damage and medium-damage blades. A detailed finite element analysis of the dynamic behaviour revealed that the vibration modes were significantly different from those of the tuned assembly. The twin modes were found to be split into single modes, some with highly distorted modeshapes, the so-called rogue modes. A nonlinear viscous flow analysis revealed truly unsteady effects and time-accurate aeroelasticity analyses with vibratory blade motion were undertaken to investigate the flutter stability. The computational domain included both a whole-annulus fan assembly and an intake duct and the resulting mesh contained approximately 2,200,000 grid points. The investigation was conducted for two points on the compressor characteristic, the first one corresponding to higher mass flow/lower pressure ratio and the second one to lower mass flow/higher pressure ratio. At the higher mass flow point, the flow separation was restricted to the immediate surrounding passages and the forcing onto the downstream blades was relatively small. However, a rotating stall event was observed for the lower mass flow point and the subsequent unsteady aerodynamic forces on the blade were high. At both mass flow settings, the flutter stability of the damaged fan assembly was predicted to be worse than that of the undamaged reference assembly.

Multibladerow Forced Response Modeling in Axial-Flow Core Compressors

This paper describes the formulation and application of an advanced numerical model for the simulation of blade-passing and low-engine order forced response in turbomachinery core compressors. The Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes equations are used to represent the flow in a nonlinear time-accurate fashion on unstructured meshes of mixed elements. The structural model is based on a standard finite-element representation. The fluid mesh is moved at each time step according to the structural motion so that changes in blade aerodynamic damping and flow unsteadiness can be accommodated automatically. A whole-annulus 5-bladerow forced response calculation, where three upstream and one downstream bladerows were considered in addition to the rotor bladerow of interest, was undertaken using over 20 million grid points. The results showed not only some potential shortcomings of equivalent 2-bladerow computations for the determination of the main blade-passing forced response, but also revealed the potential importance of low engine-order harmonics. Such harmonics, due to stator blade number differences, or arising from common symmetric sectors, can only be taken into account by including all stator bladerows of interest. The low engine-order excitation that could arise from a blocked passage was investigated next. It was shown that high vibration response could arise in such cases.

Whole-annulus aeroelasticity analysis of a 17-bladerow WRF compressor using an unstructured Navier–Stokes solver

This paper describes a large-scale aeroelasticity computation for an aero-engine core compressor. The computational domain includes all 17 bladerows, resulting in a mesh with over 68 million points. The Favre-averaged Navier–Stokes equations are used to represent the flow in a non-linear time-accurate fashion on unstructured meshes of mixed elements. The structural model of the first two rotor bladerows is based on a standard finite element representation. The fluid mesh is moved at each time step according to the structural motion so that changes in blade aerodynamic damping and flow unsteadiness can be accommodated automatically. An efficient domain decomposition technique, where special care was taken to balance the memory requirement across processors, was developed as part of the work. The calculation was conducted in parallel mode on 128 CPUs of an SGI Origin 3000. Ten vibration cycles were obtained using over 2.2 CPU years, though the elapsed time was a week only. Steady-state flow measurements and predictions were found to be in good agreement. A comparison of the averaged unsteady flow and the steady-state flow revealed some discrepancies. It was concluded that, in due course, the methodology would be adopted by industry to perform routine numerical simulations of the unsteady flow through entire compressor assemblies with vibrating blades not only to minimise engine and rig tests but also to improve performance predictions.

Multi-bladerow fan forced response predictions using an integrated three-dimensional time-domain aeroelasticity model

Abstract A non-linear integrated aeroelasticity system to predict the forced vibration response of aero-engine fans is presented in this paper. The computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solver, which uses Favre-averaged Navier-Stokes equations on unstructured grids of mixed elements, is coupled to a modal model of the structure so that the effects of blade flexibility can be accommodated. The structural motion due to unsteady fluid forces is computed at every time step and the flow mesh is moved to follow the structure so that the resulting flow unsteadiness is determined in a time-accurate fashion. Two fan forced response case studies are reported in detail. The first one deals with a high-pressure ratio fan, the excitation being due to the upstream variable-angle inlet guide vanes (VIGVs). The unsteady flow analysis with blade motion was conducted using a sector of three VIGVs and four rotor blades. The wake predictions were found to be in good agreement with the corresponding laser measurements. The flow was observed to be completely separated for high VIGV angles and the excitation encompassed several harmonics. The predicted rotor blade vibration levels were generally found to be within 30 per cent of the measured values. The forced response to upstream obstructions was studied in the next fan case study. Three whole bladerows, consisting of 11 struts, 33 VIGVs and 26 rotor blades, were modelled in full. The model also included a prescribed inlet distortion pattern so that the combined effects of stator wakes and inlet distortion on the response of the rotor blades could be studied. The unsteady flow calculations were conducted using a time-accurate non-linear viscous flow representation. Blade motion was also included. Such an undertaking required about 4.2 million grid points to include all three bladerows in a complete stage calculation. To reduce the computational effort, a number of smaller computations were conducted by considering the stator and rotor domains separately: the outflow solution of the stator domain was used as an inflow boundary condition to the rotor domain. The results indicated that such isolated bladerow computations were likely to under-predict the response levels because of neglecting rotor-stator interactions. A number of low engine order (LEO) harmonics were identified from an inspection of the unsteady forcing created by the inlet distortions. Good agreement was obtained for cases where experimental data were available.

Rotating Stall Observations in a High Speed Compressor: Part 1 — Experimental Study

In this two part paper the phenomenon of part span rotating stall is studied. The objective is to improve understanding of the physics by which stable and persistent rotating stall occurs within high speed axial flow compressors. This phenomenon is studied both experimentally (part 1) and numerically (part 2).The experimental observations reported in Part 1 are now explored through the use of 3D unsteady RANS simulation. The objective is to both to validate the computational model and, where possible, explore some physical aspects of the phenomena.Unsteady simulations are presented, performed at a fixed speed with the three rows of variable stator stagger vanes adjusted to deliberately mismatch the front stages and provoke stall. Two families of rotating stall are identified by the model, consistent with experimental observations from Part 1.The first family of rotating stall originates from hub corner separations developing on the stage 1 stator vanes. These gradually coalesce into a multi-cell rotating stall pattern confined to the hub region of the stator and its downstream rotor. The second family originates from regions of blockage associated with tip clearance flow over the stage 1 rotor blade. These also coalesce into a multi-cell rotating stall pattern of shorter length scale confined to the leading edge tip region. Some features of each of these two patterns are then explored as the variable stator vanes are mismatched further, pushing each region deeper into stall.The numerical predictions show a credible match with the experimental findings of Part 1. This suggests that a RANS modelling approach is sufficient to capture some important aspects of part span rotating stall behavior.© 2014 ASME