Nonlinear Vibration by Asynchronous Excitation Force in Friction Damper of Turbine Blade

Turbine blades are now being used under increasingly severe conditions in order to increase the thermal efficiency of gas turbines. Friction dampers are often used to reduce the vibration of the blade and improve the plant reliability. This is a general study dealing with resonance passing where the natural frequency of the turbine blade coincides with the frequency of specific harmonic excitation forces while increasing the turbine rotation speed. Asynchronous components of excitation forces are also considered in addition to the synchronous components caused by specific harmonic excitation forces. In this study, a new method for predicting the characteristics of nonlinear vibration under excitation force including both synchronous and asynchronous force components is developed. In order to investigate the effect of additional asynchronous loading, time history response analyses considering nonlinear vibration using simulated turbine blades were conducted. Results showed that friction damper slip can be induced by the presence of the additional asynchronous excitation force components even for low values of synchronous excitation force. It is shown that it is possible to use a calibration factor to predict vibration characteristics considering friction slipping by estimating the ratio of the total excitation force to the single harmonic excitation force. To verify the effect of asynchronous excitation force and the validity of the proposed correction method, verification tests were conducted experimentally. The experimental results show that friction slipping occurred under small harmonic excitation force when there was asynchronous excitation force and show good agreement with the numerical results. Moreover, the validity of the proposed method which corrects the dynamic characteristics obtained using of the first order harmonic balance method is confirmed.