A Novel Approach to Vibration Suppression Utilizing Laser Powder Bed Fusion

Emerging additive manufacturing techniques such as laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) introduce a novel way of constructing components with inherent damping qualities.  The current integrally bladed rotors (IBRs) found on next generation turbine engine aircrafts offer a significant disadvantage in vibration suppression compared to the inserted airfoil and disk combinations found in legacy fleets.  To address this disadvantage in damping, the LPBF process is used as a gateway to offer components with inherent damping, via powder particle friction, which grant an increase in damping quality compared to fully fused parts.  Previous studies have shown a 20X increase in vibration damping against a fully fused part.  While damping is initially increased with the powder mechanism; a loss of vibration suppression quality eventually occurs when endurance is tested.  This study will investigate the damping effects of this technology when applied with different internal geometries.  Additionally it will observe the change in loss of vibration suppression thought sinusoidal strain dwell testing and how that is affected by the different internal geometries.  Multiple different geometries will be investigated.  Two different horizontal wave formations (varying phase), rounded hexagon, square with rounded edges, square with pointed edges.  This investigation will start the work of optimizing pocket geometry for future applications.