Systematic mistuning of bladed disk assemblies with friction contacts

In turbomachinery, friction contacts are widely used to reduce dynamic stresses in turbine blades in order to avoid expensive damages. As a result of energy dissipation in the friction contacts the blade vibration amplitudes are reduced. In case of so-called friction dampers, which are pressed on the platforms of the blades by centrifugal forces, the damping effect can be optimized by varying the damper mass. This optimization can be done by means of a simulation model applying the so-called component mode synthesis and the Harmonic Balance Method to reduce computation time. It is based on the modal description of each substructure. In a real turbine or compressor blading great differences in the magnitude of the individual blade amplitudes occur caused by unavoidable mistuning of all system parameters like contact parameters and natural frequencies of the blades. It may happen that most of the blades experience only small stresses whereas a few blades experience critical stresses. Therefore, it is necessary to consider mistuning for all system parameters to simulate the forced response of bladed disk assemblies with friction contacts. For a mistuned bladed disk the complete system has to be modeled to calculate the dynamic response. In practice, usually the standard deviations instead of the distributions of the system parameters are known. Therefore, Monte-Carlo simulations are necessary to calculate the forced response of the blades for given mean values and standard deviations of the system parameters. To reduce the computational time, an approximate method has been developed and extended for small and moderate standard deviations of the system parameters to calculate the distribution and the envelopes of the frequency response functions for statistically varying system parameters, in the following called statistical mistuning. The approximate method is based on a sensitivity analysis and the assumption of a Weibull distribution of the vibration amplitudes of the blades. Both, the approximate method and the assumption of a Weibull distribution of the vibration amplitudes are validated by Monte-Carlo simulations. By these investigations the influence of different arrangements of the system parameters for given mean values and standard deviations of the vibration amplitudes of the blades can be determined, too. For the present investigations only a small influence of the arrangement of blades with respect to their natural frequencies has been observed. On the other hand, an intentional mistuning of the damper masses and the natural frequencies of the blades in a systematic way, in the following called systematic mistuning, can be investigated to reduce the amplitudes of the system. The simulation results of a systematic mistuning has been validated by a test rig with a rotating bladed disk assembly with friction dampers. The investigations show a good agreement between the simulations and the measurements but only a slight decrease of the maximum amplitudes in case of a systematic mistuning. Copyright {\copyright} 2004 by ASME