A Modal Interpretation for Aeroelastic Stability Enhancement of Mistuned Bladed Disks

Understanding the mechanism of the aeroelastic stability improvement induced by mistuning is essential for the design of bladed disks in aero-engines. In this paper, a quantitative interpretation is given. It starts by projecting the mistuned aeroelastic modes into the space spanned by the tuned modes. In this way, the mistuned aeroelastic damping can be expressed by the superposition of the tuned damping. Closed-form expressions are found, providing clear interpretations of several frequently reported trends in the literature. Further, a prediction approach is proposed, where the analysis of aeroelastic coupling only needs to be performed once, and it is decoupled from the analysis of the mistuning effect. The advantages are two-fold. First, the design of the mistuning pattern is accelerated. Second, this allows one to introduce more accurate data or models of aeroelastic damping. An empirical bladed disk with NASA-ROTOR37 profile is used as an example, and the alternate, wave, and random patterns are considered.