Enhancing Blade Durability to Foreign Object Damage Through Multidisciplinary Design Optimization

Abstract Foreign Object Damage (FOD) poses a significant challenge to the durability of compressor blades in aero engines. Impacts from foreign objects can threaten structural integrity and increase maintenance costs. This study presents a multidisciplinary optimization approach to improve rotor blade durability against FOD while preserving aerodynamic performance. A fully automatic aero-structural process chain is developed, combining finite element and computational fluid dynamics analyses. The optimization uses the meta-heuristic algorithm AutoOpti to maximize the allowable stress concentration factor Kt along FOD-sensitive regions without compromising aerodynamic efficiency and stability. The 1.5-front stage of an axial high-pressure compressor serves as a test case, focusing on critical rotor areas. The results show a significant improvement in FOD robustness, with optimized designs achieving up to a 42% increase in allowable Kt and improved surge margin. This work aims to investigate essential design factors for FOD-resistant airfoils using a multidisciplinary framework, providing insights into the impact of design variables on rotor robustness. The developed methodology has broad applicability for addressing the issue of FOD robustness during the design phase and is applied for a test case in this work.