Effects of multiple blade interaction on the containment of blade fragments during a rotor failure

A finite element analysis is used to study the impact and the containment aspects of rotor blade fragments that are produced during a aircraft jet engine rotor failure. The impact and containment studies are performed on a ring-type containment structure and various fragment types are considered in this study. For each type of fragment, the ring thickness is varied incrementally and the ring response, residual kinetic energy level of the fragments, magnitude of impact forces and the overall containment or failure are determined. First, only a single fragment is considered and the rotor is assumed to contain no other blades. Next, the remaining blades are introduced and the effects of multiple collisions with the other blades on the containment are analyzed. The explicit, nonlinear finite element code Dyna3d is used for the numerical computations in this study and the results are compared with the experimental results performed on a T58 rotor at the spin facility of the Naval Air Propulsion Test Center.