Aeroelastic prediction and analysis for a transonic fan rotor with the “hot” blade shape

Aeroelastic prediction and analysis for a transonic fan rotor with the"hot"blade shape

This paper focuses on aeroelastic prediction and analysis for a transonic fan rotor with only its “hot” (running) blade shape available, which is often the case in practical engineering such as in the design stage. Based on an in-house and well-validated CFD solver and a hybrid structural finite element modeling/modal approach, three main aspects are considered with special emphasis on dealing with the “hot” blade shape. First, static aeroelastic analysis is presented for shape transformation between “cold” (manufacturing) and “hot” blades, and influence of the dynamic variation of “hot” shape on evaluated aerodynamic performance is investigated. Second, implementation of the energy method for flutter prediction is given and both a regularly used fixed “hot” shape and a variable “hot” shape are considered. Through comparison, influence of the dynamic variation of “hot” shape on evaluated aeroelastic stability is also investigated. Third, another common way to predict flutter, time-domain method, is used for the same concerned case, from which the predicted flutter characteristics are compared with those from the energy method. A well-publicized axial-flow transonic fan rotor, Rotor 67, is selected as a typical example, and the corresponding numerical results and discussions are presented in detail.