Experimental Research Into Aeroelastic Phenomena in Turbine Rotor Blades Inside ARIAS EU Project

Abstract

This paper describes an aeroelastic experimental campaign on a low-pressure turbine-bladed rotor in a rotating wind tunnel that took place as a part of the Advanced Research Into Aeromechanical Solutions (ARIAS) EU project. The campaign can be considered a continuation of the free-flutter test that was performed as part of the FUTURE EU project, where the saturation of asynchronous vibrations due to dry friction was characterized. This new campaign studied new aspects of the physics behind saturated flutter, including the non-linear interaction between synchronous excitation and asynchronous vibration, the effectiveness of different mistuning patterns to suppress flutter, and the viability of under-platform dampers as a technology to control the amplitude of asynchronous vibrations. Furthermore, the campaign explored various operation conditions for the turbine rotor, including near-stall. In general, there was a good agreement between the theoretical predictions regarding all these different aspects of turbine flutter and the test results.