Investigation of Forced Response Sensitivity of Low Pressure Compressor With Respect to Variation in Tip Clearance Size

This study aims to numerically investigate the sensitivity of the forced response with respect to the variation of the tip clearance setting of a low pressure compressor BluM^™(monoblock bladed drum) when it is subjected to low engine order excitations. Two different types of blades are employed in the upstream row in order to generate the low engine order excitations. The forced response as well as the aerodynamic damping is numerically estimated using the TWIN approach. The experiments are conducted to measure the forced response for the nominal tip gap to validate the numerical results. Further, simulations are performed for a range of tip clearances. The variation of the steady load distributions due to the changes of the tip clearance are analyzed and presented. The aerodynamic damping and the forced response are calculated and compared for different tip clearances. It is observed that aerodynamic damping increases significantly with tip gap, whereas the excitation forces are reduced. As consequence of these two evolutions, the forced response decreases drastically for larger tip clearance.