Investigation of Working Line Variation Onto Forced Response Vibrations of a Compressor Blisk

Avoidance of high vibration amplitudes of rotor blades on the conventional working line of the compressor is a design requirement. However, rotors of aircraft engine compressors could temporarily operate near choke and stall conditions, due to transient manoeuvers or deterioration. As a result, the vibration levels might change, which could lead to a premature high cycle fatigue of the blades. This paper aims at studying the effect of different throttle positions at five constant aerodynamic speed lines ranging from 60% to 100% of the maximum speed onto the resulting vibration amplitudes and aerodynamic damping values on an integrally bladed disk (blisk) of a transonic research compressor.

Finite Element Analysis (FEA) and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations are performed via an automated workflow, which reads aerodynamic data of the operating points of interest and runs all necessary aeromechanic computations along with their corresponding post-processing routines to calculate the resulting system response and amplitude frequency values.

Using this workflow, Eigenfrequencies and mode-shapes of the rotor blades are obtained through multiple FEA simulations that are automatically executed at all relevant shaft speeds. The time-averaged flow pressure field on the blades is extracted from steady CFD simulations of the whole compressor and mapped onto the structural mesh of the rotor. Through a Spokes diagram, operating points in close proximity to resonance spots are identified, as well as their corresponding excited vibration modes. To obtain the time-variable flow pressure fields on the blades, unsteady CFD simulations are performed using a single passage model of the rotor with its upstream and downstream stators, as space-time periodicity of the flow data across the annulus is assumed. Additionally, a CFD rotor model with only a quarter section of the full annulus is built, where a unidirectional coupling approach between the structure and the fluid is applied to calculate the aerodynamic damping values.

The calculated vibration amplitudes at engine orders of interest are then compared to strain gauge readings of a corresponding rig test. After validation of the simulation data, the sensitivity of the forced response due to working line variations is studied. Looking at the maximum aerodynamic speed line, it is clear that operating points near compressor stall are accompanied by high vibration response relative to the aerodynamic design point. A possible reason for this amplification is the change of flow incidence and the increase of pressure loss at the upstream blade-row. However, this effect becomes less articulated in the lower speed lines, where amplitudes of the forced vibrations change only slightly between different throttling positions. In this paper, the three-dimensional flow inside the passages is also carefully studied, which allows to better understand the relationship between flow characteristics and the resulting vibration response of compressor blades.