Particularities of Blading Free Resonance Design for Heavy Duty Gas Turbines With Circumferential Rotor Grooves

Abstract

Blades for heavy duty engines with circumferential rotor grooves are designed such that radial contact is made between the blade teeth and rotor groove at steady state operation conditions. However, sometimes circumferential contact arises between neighboring blade shanks, which is often caused by blade root /rotor thermal expansion. In this case, the radial fixation will give the lower limit of blade frequency band, and the circumferential will give the upper one. The Blade frequency difference between these two fixations might reach about 200–500 Hz depending on blade airfoil and root sizes. When some excitation source (e.g., vane passing frequencies caused by up-stream and down-stream vane counts) has a frequency level situated between blade frequencies caused by radial and circumferential contact, such a case is the subject of the proposed approach. In order to assess how strongly the blade might be fixed under different conditions and how long it might be in resonance during engine start-up and subsequent loading, a 3D elastic-plastic transient analysis and corresponding frequency calculation of blade/rotor assembly is used. At engine start-up the circumferential (lateral) contact between neighboring blade roots is insignificant, and the radial contact between the rotor and the blade is dominant. The lateral contact spot between neighboring blade attachments during start-up appears due to different rates of blade/rotor heating. Further heating leads to an increase of the lateral contact spot areas. The closing of these contact surfaces starts from the outer root edge and spreads toward the inner one, leading to an increase of assembly natural frequencies. Engine loading and further heating lead to the appearance of a circumferential gap between the surfaces, causing the lateral contact to disappear during steady state. The blade root coupling switches again to the usual radial contact state, with the corresponding reduction of natural frequencies. Because the described phenomenon might occur for some time during every start-up and shut-down (from several minutes to couple of hours), it becomes even more severe from a dynamics standpoint if some natural frequency of coupled system crosses the exciting frequency. Examples of assembly frequency tuning are presented.