Towards Full 3D Numerical Simulation of Whirl Motions Stemming From Unilateral Contact Constraints in Aircraft Engines

The reduction of nominal clearances between a rotating bladed-disk and its surrounding casing yields a very significant increase of the overall engine efficiency. However, the smaller the clearances, the higher the risk of structural contacts between static and rotating components that may lead to hazardous interaction phenomena. In particular, at the fan stage of an aircraft engine, impacts between the rotating bladed-disk and the casing may generate forward or backward whirl motions induced by the precession of the shaft axis of rotation. In such specific configuration, an accurate modeling of interaction phenomena requires to account for both centrifugal and gyroscopic effects on the rotor. This contribution addresses the development of efficient reduced-order models of industrial finite element models embedding both centrifugal and gyroscopic effects. Proposed developments are validated on an academic model and are then applied on the finite element model of an aircraft engine fan stage. Results obtained with the academic model underline that the impact of gyroscopic effects on the rotor’s dynamics is essentially related to the frequency split of 1-nodal diameter free-vibration modes of the first modal family. Results presented on the industrial finite element models are limited to a few case studies as a proof-of-concept.