Efficient prediction of classical flutter stability of turbomachinery blade using the boundary element type numerical method

Abstract

In this paper classical flutter phenomena in power turbine rotor is studied. A medium fidelity 2D flow solver based on boundary element method is developed for this purpose. The classical flutter parameters in turbomachinery cascades such as aerodynamic damping at different inter-blade phase angle are estimated using flutter stability analysis flow solver. The flow solver is developed using 2D unsteady potential flow based panel method. The unsteady aerodynamic loading on the vibrating cascade is estimated using a traveling-wave mode oscillation. The simulated aerodynamic damping and pressure coefficient using boundary element method are compared against both experimental data and the computational fluid dynamics model’s results at different flow conditions. The boundary element based method results demonstrate good agreement with experimental data. The boundary element based flow solver shows significant reduction in computational time compared to computational fluid dynamics model.