Modeling of Abradable Coating Removal in Aircraft Engines Through Delay Differential Equations

In modern turbomachinery, abradable materials are implemented on casings to reduce operating tip clearances and mitigate direct unilateral contact occurrences between rotating and stationary components. However, both experimental and numerical investigations revealed that blade/abradable interactions may lead to blade failures. In order to comprehend the underlying mechanism, an accurate modeling of the abradable removal process is required. Time-marching strategies where the abradable removal is modeled through plasticity are available but another angle of attack is proposed in this work. It is assumed that the removal of abradable liners shares similarities with machine tool chatter encountered in manufacturing. Chatter is a self-excited vibration caused by the interaction between the machine and the workpiece through the cutting forces, and the corresponding dynamics are efficiently captured by delay differential equations. They differ from ordinary differential equations in that previous states of the system are involved. This mathematical framework is here employed for the exploration of the blade stability during abradable removal. The proposed tool advantageously features a reduced computational cost and consistency with existing time-marching solution methods. Potentially dangerous interaction regimes are accurately predicted and instability lobes match both flexural and torsional modal responses. Essentially, the regenerative nature of chatter in machining processes can also be attributed to abradable coating removal in turbomachinery.