Aeroelastic stability analysis of a bird-damaged aeroengine fan assembly

Bird strike is a major consideration when designing fan blades for large-diameter aeroengines. Current methods rely on impact tests and structural optimisation but it is highly desirable to have predictive numerical models to assess the aerodynamic and aeroelastic stability of bird-damaged fan assemblies. The aim of this paper is to present such a methodology and to study a representative case. The particular fan assembly under investigation contained two consecutive blades with unequal impact damage, the so-called heavy-damage and medium-damage blades. A detailed finite element analysis of the dynamic behaviour revealed that the vibration modes were significantly different from those of the tuned assembly. The twin modes were found to be split into single modes, some with highly distorted modeshapes, the so-called rogue modes. A nonlinear viscous flow analysis revealed truly unsteady effects and time-accurate aeroelasticity analyses with vibratory blade motion were undertaken to investigate the flutter stability. The computational domain included both a whole-annulus fan assembly and an intake duct and the resulting mesh contained approximately 2,200,000 grid points. The investigation was conducted for two points on the compressor characteristic, the first one corresponding to higher mass flow/lower pressure ratio and the second one to lower mass flow/higher pressure ratio. At the higher mass flow point, the flow separation was restricted to the immediate surrounding passages and the forcing onto the downstream blades was relatively small. However, a rotating stall event was observed for the lower mass flow point and the subsequent unsteady aerodynamic forces on the blade were high. At both mass flow settings, the flutter stability of the damaged fan assembly was predicted to be worse than that of the undamaged reference assembly.