Contact-induced blade-casing interactions in aero-engine turbines - An integrated simulation framework for local and global nonlinearities

Gas turbines play a vital role in terms of energy and mobility in 21st century.

Accurate simulation tools are mandatory to increase competitiveness by increasing safety and reducing development costs.The growing tendency of designers to increase the efficiency of turbines has led to reduced operating clearances between rotating and static components and consequently frequent structural contact during operation.

On top of that, the design tendency to reductions in fuel burn, noise and emissions makes the structural components lighter, slenderer and under greater excitation which increases their geometrically nonlinear behavior.Reliable analysis of the dynamic response of a turbine during blade-casing contact-induced interactions is of great importance due to its impact on fatigue life or potential catastrophic failure.The project aims at developing a validated numerical tool to predict the vibration due to blade-casing interactions.

High computational efficiency will be granted by a nonlinear model order reduction technique able to handle both contact (local) and geometric (global) nonlinearities.The numerical predictive tool will be experimentally validated, taking advantage of the experimental equipment available at the host institution.The BC-Ints project aims at developing and validating mathematical and numerical models where both local and global nonlinearities are taken into account for an accurate prediction of the dynamic behaviour of rotors in case of blade-casing interactions.