Mass Balancing of Hollow Fan Blades

Abstract

This paper uses a typical section model to investigate analytically the effect of mass balancing as applied to hollow, supersonic fan blades. A procedure to determine the best configuration of an internal balancing mass to provide flutter alleviation is developed. This procedure is applied to a typical supersonic shroudless fan blade which is unstable both in the solid configuration and when it is hollow with no balancing mass. The addition of an optimized balancing mass is shown to stabilize the blade at the design condition.