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Predicting response bounds for friction-damped gas turbine blades with uncertain friction coupling

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journal contribution
posted on 2019-01-11, 15:58 authored by T. Butlin, G. Spelman, P. Ghaderi, William Midgley, R. Umehara
Friction dampers are often used to reduce high amplitude vibration within gas turbines: they are a robust solution that are able to withstand extreme operating environments. Although the turbine blades are manufactured to tight tolerances, there can be significant variability in the overall response of the assembly. Uncertainties associated with the frictional contact properties are a major factor contributing to this variability. This paper applies a recently developed method for predicting response bounds to friction-damped gas turbines when the characteristics of the friction dampers are unknown, including uncertainty regarding the underlying functional form of the friction law. The approach taken is to represent the frictional contact using a describing function, and formulate an optimisation problem to seek upper and lower bounds on a chosen response metric, such as displacement amplitude. Constraints are chosen that describe known properties of the frictional nonlinearity, without needing to specify a particular constitutive law. The method was validated by comparison with numerical and experimental results from an idealised test system. The experimental test rig consisted of an array of eight beams coupled by pin-contact friction dampers. A modal description of this test rig formed the basis of a numerical model, which uses the Harmonic Balance Method (HBM) for nonlinear simulations. A set of Monte Carlo tests was carried out numerically and experimentally for both a two-beam sub-assembly as well as for the full eight-beam assembly. Comparisons with numerical results showed excellent agreement providing confident verification of the implementation, and comparisons with experimental results revealed that the bounds became less conservative as the system complexity increased. Overall the results are promising: upper and lower response bounds for an array of friction-damped systems can be computed at similar cost to a single HBM simulation, giving reliable bounds that are valid for both parametric and model uncertainties associated with the friction couplings.

Funding

The authors would like to thank Mitsubishi Heavy Industries for funding this research.

History

School

  • Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering

Published in

Journal of Sound and Vibration

Volume

440

Pages

399 - 411

Citation

BUTLIN, T. ... et al, 2018. Predicting response bounds for friction-damped gas turbine blades with uncertain friction coupling. Journal of Sound and Vibration, 440, pp.399-411.

Publisher

© Elsevier

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publisher statement

This paper was accepted for publication in the journal Journal of Sound and Vibration and the definitive published version is available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsv.2018.08.037.

Acceptance date

2018-08-16

Publication date

2018

ISSN

0022-460X

Language

  • en