STUDY TO IMPROVE TURBINE ENGINE ROTOR BLADE CONTAINMENT

Abstract : An engineering study on a large turbofan engine was conducted to: (1) accurately estimate the engine weight increase and design criteria necessary to contain equivalent disk fragments resulting from a rotor failure, (2) evaluate forward containment for tip fragments of fan blades, (3) identify critical structural components and loads for the loss of an equivalent fan disk fragment through analysis of the rotor/frame transient dynamic response. The fragments studied for engine containment were disk fragments with energy equivalent to two adjacent blades and an included disk serration, and four adjacent blades and three included disk serrations. The forward containment study was made to determine the additional weight required to contain or deflect turbofan engine fan blade tip fragments up to 30 degrees forward of the plane of rotation, as measured from the axis of rotation. The results of this study indicated significant weight increases for the engine in order to contain the equivalent disk fragments of two blades with an included disk serration and four blades with three included disk serrations. The total resultant engine weight increase (shown in Table 9) for the two blade fragment is 367 pounds and for the four blade fragment is 682 pounds.