Aeromechanic Response of a Coupled Inlet-Fan Boundary Layer Ingesting Distortion-Tolerant Fan

Abstract

Abstract Boundary layer ingestion has significant potential to reduce fuel burn in aircraft engines. However, designing a fan that can operate in an environment of continuous distortion without aeromechanical failure is a critical challenge. Capturing the requisite aeromechanical flow features in a high-fidelity computational setting is necessary in validating satisfactory designs as well as determining possible regions for overall improvement. In the current work, a three-dimensional, time-accurate, Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes computational fluid dynamic code is utilized to study a distortion-tolerant fan coupled to a boundary layer ingesting inlet. The comparison between this coupled inlet-fan and a previous fan-only simulation will provide insight into the changes in aeromechanic response of the fan blades. Additionally, comparisons to previous wind tunnel tests are made to provide validation of inlet distortion as seen by the distortion-tolerant fan. A resonant crossing was also investigated for the 85% speed operational line condition to compare resonant response between the inlet-fan, fan-only, and experiment. A decrease in maximum tip displacement is observed in the forced response of the coupled inlet-fan compared to the fan-only simulation. The predicted maximum tip displacement was still below the upper limit on the range observed in the wind tunnel tests but matched well with the average tip displacement value of 27.6 mils. A single mode was chosen at the 100% speed condition to provide insight into the effects that the inlet duct has on fan stability. Near stall and near choke conditions were also simulated to observe how the changes of progressing along the speed line affects flutter stability prediction. The analysis shows the fan has low levels of aerodynamic damping at all the conditions tested. However, the coupled inlet-fan shows a decrease in the level of aerodynamic damping over what was observed with the fan-only simulation. Some of the blades experienced single cycles of negative aerodamping which indicate a possibility of increased blade vibration amplitude but were followed by positive aerodamping cycles. Work is continuing to understand possible sources to account for the differences observed between the two simulation cases as well as with the experiment.