Forced response and wear volume consumption of an LPT tip shrouded blade

In the last years, the aeronautical industry has had a continuous growth and expansion and the aircraft manufacturers have focused their efforts on improving efficiency and performance of existing engines. Most of these improvements come from recently developed analyses techniques applied to the main engine’s components. One of them is the Low-Pressure Turbine (LPT) which has a fundamental part on the overall efficiency of an aircraft engine. The design process of an LPT involves several disciplines such as Aeromechanics, Rotordynamics, Aeroelasticity. For these reasons, this thesis, carried out in collaboration with GE Avio Aero, is focused on the study of forced response analyses and wear behavior of a tip shrouded blade of a Low-Pressure Turbine. In particular, the main topic is the study of the impact of changing the interlocking angle on the dynamic behavior of the blades. In fact, an excessive wear at the interlocking interface can change the dynamic behavior, causing HCF failures due to the occurrence of unavoidable resonance. The study is conducted on two different blade configurations, i.e. Baseline and Redesign models. The analyses are performed using several commercial software such as Hypermesh, Ansys APDL and Matlab. Furthermore, the numerical tools Policontact and Poliwear are used for forced response analyses and for the evaluation of the wear behavior, respectively. The study is carried out for an industrial blade, therefore only the qualitative results will be reported.