Forced Response Analyses of Mistuned Radial Inflow Turbines

Radial turbine wheels designed as blade integrated disks (blisk) are widely used in various industrial applications. However, related to the introduction of exhaust gas turbochargers in the field of small and medium sized engines, a sustainable demand for radial turbine wheels has come along. Despite those blisks being state of the art, a number of fundamental problems, mainly referring to fluid-structure-interaction and, therefore, to the vibration behavior, have been reported. Aiming to achieve an enhanced understanding of fluid-structure-interaction in radial turbine wheels, a numerical method, able to predict forced responses of mistuned blisks due to aerodynamic excitation, is presented. In a first step, the unsteady aerodynamic forcing is determined by modeling the spiral casing, the stator vanes, and the rotor blades of the entire turbine stage. In a second step, the aerodynamic damping induced by blade vibration is computed using a harmonic balance technique. The structure itself is represented by a reduced order model being extended by aerodynamic damping effects and aerodynamic forcings. Mistuning is introduced by adjusting the modal stiffness matrix based on results of blade by blade measurements that have been performed at rest. In order to verify the numerical method, the results are compared with strain-gauge data obtained during rig-tests. As a result, a measured low engine order excitation was found by modeling the spiral casing. Furthermore, a localization phenomenon due to frequency mistuning could be proven. The predicted amplitudes are close to the measured data.