Analysis of Fluid-Structure Interaction of an Elastic Blade in Cascade

Abstract

A time-marching numerical model for the analysis of fluid-structure interaction caused by oncoming alternating vortices has been developed by Jadic et al. (1998). Its applicability to analyzing realistic fluid–structure interaction problems has successfully been established in a recent experimental work of a flat plate in a circular cylinder wake (Lau et al. 2002). Using the model, So et al. (1999) have predicted that, under the excitation of oncoming Karman vortex street (KVS) vortices, an elastic airfoil/blade in inviscid uniform flow exhibits two types of fluid–structure resonance, namely aerodynamic and structural resonance. Aerodynamic resonance is of pure aerodynamic origin and occurs with rigid airfoil/blade excited at normalized frequency parameter c/d = 0.5, 1.5, 2.5 etc., where c is the blade chord and d is the streamwise separation between two neighboring vortices. For an elastic airfoil/blade, as a result of coupled fluid–structure interaction, structural resonance occurs at a normalized frequency close to the natural frequency in vacuo of the airfoil/blade. The occurrence of fluid-structure resonance has also been shown critical in noise generation process (Leung & So 2001). The present study extends the scope of the analysis to fluid–structure interactions occurring in axial–flow turbomachine cascade. When the flow is passing through the rotor, it generates wakes containing KVS vortices behind the rotor blades. The convecting wake will induce perturbations on the downstream stator blades at a wake passing frequency (Rao 1991). Such wake–blade interaction is important in determining the fatigue life of the blades and noise generation of the cascade. The cascade analysis starts with modeling the two-dimensional turbine stator by five high–loading blades evenly separated by s in inviscid uniform flow. Oncoming KVS vortices are released upstream to represent the passing wake originating from the rotor, and are allowed to pass through the stator blades. The blade pitch to blade chord ratio s/c and normalized frequency parameter c/d are important parameters of the problems. Fluid–structure interactions are fully resolved by the same numerical technique (Jadic et al. 1998, So et al. 1999). The combined effects of s/c and c/d on the aerodynamic and structural responses of the central blade are studied and discussed.