Containment of blade shedding in gas turbine engines: part I—design and development of a scaled down test rig

Abstract

Part I of this complementary article is concerned with the design, development and commissioning of a novel instrumented scaled down test rig to examine the dynamics and containment of a released blade during blade shedding (blade out) incidents in aviation gas turbine engines. The scaled down fully bladed disk is designed using non-dimensional parameters derived using Buckingham’s dimensional analysis technique. These parameters are enforced to ensure dynamic equivalency of the scaled down model and a realistic full size gas turbine engine. The rotor with drive system is encapsulated in a thick protective casing to contain all fragments within the confines of test rig and ensure safety of operation. The test rig is equipped with a high speed camera and numerous sensors interconnected via data acquisition system to two processors for data collection and data management. The purpose is to measure the released blade trajectory, its multiple interactions with the trailing blades, containment within the ring, the stresses resulting from dynamic unbalance and blade impingement, and their effect on engine mount. The successful operation of the newly commissioned test rig is tested under steady state conditions and we were able to demonstrate the applicability of the rig to blade shedding and containment tests in an efficient and cost effective manner.