Structural dynamic modeling for rotating blades using three dimensional finite elements

Abstract

A precise analysis model was developed in this paper to investigate the dynamic characteristics of rotating composite blades. An eighteen-node solid-shell finite element was used to model the blade structures. This study is focused on geometrically nonlinear problems, because the material is assumed linear elastic. Incremental total Lagrangian approach was adopted to allow estimations on arbitrarily large rotations and displacements. The equations of motion for the finite element model were derived by using Hamilton’s principle, and the resulting nonlinear equilibrium equations were solved by applying Newton-Raphson method combined with load control. A modified stress-strain relation was adopted to avoid the transverse shear locking problem, and fairly reliable results were obtained with no sign of locking phenomenon. The obtained numerical results were compared to several benchmark problems, and the results show a good correlation with the experimental data and other finite element analysis results. The vibration characteristics of shell- and beam-type blades were investigated. For shell-type blades, the dynamic characteristics may be significantly influenced by blade curvature, pre-twist, and geometric nonlinearity. For beam-type blades, one-dimensional beam and three-dimensional solid models offer comparable predictions for the straight and large aspect ratio blade. As blade aspect ratio decreases, considerable differences appear in the bending and torsion modes. The tip sweep angle tends to decrease the flap bending frequencies, but the torsion frequency increases with the tip sweep angle.