Aeroelastic assessment of a highly loaded high pressure compressor exposed to pressure gain combustion disturbances

Abstract

A numerical aeroelastic assessment of a highly loaded high pressure compressor exposed to flow disturbances is presented in this paper. The disturbances originate from novel, inherently unsteady, pressure gain combustion processes, such as pulse detonation, shockless explosion, wave rotor or piston topping composite cycles. All these arrangements promise to reduce substantially the specific fuel consumption of present-day aeronautical engines and stationary gas turbines. However, their unsteady behavior must be further investigated to ensure the thermodynamic efficiency gain is not hindered by stage performance losses. Furthermore, blade excessive vibration (leading to high cycle fatigue) must be avoided, especially under the additional excitations frequencies from waves traveling upstream of the combustor. Two main numerical analyses are presented, contrasting undisturbed with disturbed operation of a typical industrial core compressor. The first part of the paper evaluates performance parameters for a representative blisk stage with high-accuracy 3D unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes computations. Isentropic efficiency as well as pressure and temperature unsteady damping are determined for a broad range of disturbances. The nonlinear harmonic balance method is used to determine the aerodynamic damping. The second part provides the aeroelastic harmonic forced response of the rotor blades, with aerodynamic damping and forcing obtained from the unsteady calculations in the first part. The influence of blade mode shapes, nodal diameters and forcing frequency matching is also examined.