Containment of soft wall casing wrapped with Kevlar fabric

Aramid fabrics have been commonly used in the civil turbofan engine fan blade containment system for its excellent performance. To investigate the behavior and capability of soft wall containment casing, a series of fan blade released tests were conducted on the high-speed spin tester.The soft wall casing was fabricated by wrapping multiple layers of Kevlar49 plain woven fabric around a thin steel ring. Casings with different inner metal ring and outer fabric layers number were compared. The method of using the explicit dynamic software LS-DYNA to establish the finite element analysis model for the quantitative analysis of the containment process was developed and conducted. The simulation results are in good agreement with the test results. It is shown that the containment process of the soft wall casing can be divided into three impact stages. The casing with low-stiffness inner metal ring will get severe overall deformation and lose the structural integrity when it suffers the blade impact. Kevlar fabric layers will appear large bulge on outside surface and absorb the most impact dynamic energy of the high speed released fan blade. By summing up the results of the test and simulation, an empirical critical equation was derived to describe the relationship between the released blade dynamic energy and the Kevlar fabric thickness.

Characteristics and mechanisms of turboshaft engine axial compressor casing containment

To investigate the containment characteristics and mechanisms of axial compressor blade and casing in turboshaft engine,experimental and simulation research is conducted on Titanium alloy axial compressor blades and stainless steel simulator casings in this paper.Experiments for four thicknesses(from 0.8 mm to 1.4 mm)of casings are presented on high-speed spin tester.Perforation,ricochet with and without failure of the casings are obtained in test results.Three obvious bulges or dishing region are observed,petaling failure occurs in the first bulge or the third deformation region.Parabolic and elongated dimples are observed at the fracture surface.Finite Element(FE)models with calibrated Johnson-Cook material behavior law are built and analyzed by using explicit dynamic software for a better understanding on the containment behavior.Good agreement is obtained between the experimental observations and numerical predictions.The evolution of the impact force,energy absorption,temperature increase and the cracks’propagation are analyzed.Three force peaks occur in the impact process.Energy analysis reveals that penetration condition of ricochet with failure leads to most internal energy of the casing.

Investigation of high-speed abrasion behavior of an abradable seal rubber in aero-engine fan application

Abradable seal rubber has been widely used in aero-engine fans to improve their efficiency by reducing the clearance between rotating and stationary components. To investigate the high-speed scraping behavior between a vulcanized silicone rubber and a Ti-6Al-4V fan blade and evaluate the abradable performance of seal rubber, abrasion tests were conducted at a blade tip velocity of 50–300 m/s with an incursion rate of 100 lm/s. The influences of the blade tip velocity on the wear mechanism and interaction forces were specially analyzed. It is shown that abrasive wear and pattern wear are the predominant wear mechanisms, and pattern wear can be seen as the emergence and propagation of cracks. With an increase of the blade tip velocity, both of the final incursion depth and wear mass loss of seal rubber exhibit growth trends. The gradual changes of rubbing forces with an increase of rubbing time are the characteristic of abrasive wear, and force curves with unstable mutations are a reflection of pattern wear. At a constant incursion rate of 100 lm/s, the maximum values of interaction forces decrease first and then grow with an increase of the blade tip velocity, and the blade tip velocity of 150 m/s becomes the cut-off point between abrasive wear and pattern wear.