Fiber distortion impact on the bending deformation of laminated fan blade structures: A numerical and experimental study

Modeling and manufacturing have always been major challenges in the design of multilayered composite structures. This study introduces a novel modeling technique for the laminated fan blade structure using exact shell models. In the lamination design, iso-contours of the thickness function are used to define ply-shape code topologies with smooth geometric features. To achieve this, the marching squares algorithm is employed to determine intersections between the base mid-shell model and the target function. This lamination design facilitates both the numerical simulation and fabrication stages. Three laminated fan blades with different ply-stacking sequences of $(-60^{\circ },30^{\circ })$, $(-45^{\circ },45^{\circ })$, and $(0^{\circ },90^{\circ })$ are used for this study. In addition, the fiber-draping analysis is employed to predict changes in fiber orientations caused by the geometric curvatures and twists of the structure. Numerical simulation highlights the significant impact of the fiber distortion on the bending deformation of laminated fan blade structures. Through result comparison, numerical findings incorporating fiber-draping analysis show excellent alignment with experimental measurements.