Effects of the Seal Wire On the Nonlinear Dynamics of the Aircraft Engine Turbine Blades

Abstract Complicated systems made of multiple components are known to be difficult to model, considering their solutions can change dramatically even with the slightest variations in conditions. Aircraft engines contain such complicated systems, and some components in aircraft engines' turbines can cause significant changes in the system's overall response. Hence, this study is focused on investigating the behavior of a turbine blade of an aircraft engine and the effects of the contact between the blade and the seal wire on the dynamics of the blade-disk system. The investigation is performed via various numerical simulations in time and frequency domains. One sector of the bladed disk is modeled using the finite element method with the lock plate and the seal wire imposing cyclic symmetry boundary conditions in the static, modal, and frequency domain forced response analyses. In time domain analyses, the cyclic symmetry is replaced with simplified displacement restricting boundary conditions. The time domain analysis contains steady-state forced responses of the system. The results show that contact with the seal wire is not a major source of nonlinearity and damping. The contacts with the lock plate contribute more to the vibration damping than the seal wire. However, compared to the contacts at the root of the blade, both components remain less significant with regard to frictional damping and nonlinearity.