The focus of the present two-part investigation is on the estimation of the dynamic properties, i.e., masses, stiffnesses, natural frequencies, mode shapes and their statistical distributions, of turbomachine blades to be used in the accurate prediction of the forced response of mistuned bladed disks. As input to this process, it is assumed that the lowest natural frequencies of the blades alone have been experimentally measured, for example in a broach block test. Since the number of measurements is always less than the number of unknowns, this problem is indeterminate in nature. In this second part of the investigation, the maximum likelihood method (ML) will first be revisited and a thorough assessment of its reliability in a wide variety of conditions, including the presence of measurement noise, different distributions of blade structural properties, etc., will be conducted. Then, a technique that provides a bridge between the two identification methods introduced in Part I, i.e., the random modal stiffnesses (RMS) and maximum likelihood (ML) approaches, will be presented. This technique, termed the improved random modal stiffnesses (IRMS) method is based on the maximum likelihood concepts but yields a mistuning model similar to that of the random modal stiffnesses technique. Finally, the accuracy of the RMS, ML, and IRMS methods in predicting the forced response statistics of mistuned bladed disks will be investigated in the presence of close blade alone natural frequencies.

The focus of the present two-part investigation is on the estimation of the dynamic properties, i.e., masses, stiffnesses, natural frequencies, mode shapes and their statistical distributions, of turbomachine blades to be used in the accurate prediction of the forced response of mistuned bladed disks. As input to this process, it is assumed that the lowest natural frequencies of the blades alone have been experimentally measured, for example, in a broach block test. Since the number of measurements is always less than the number of unknowns, this problem is indeterminate in nature. In this first part of the investigation, two distinct approaches will be investigated to resolve the shortfall of data. The first one relies on the imposition of as many constraints as needed to ensure a unique solution to this identification problem. Specifically, the mode shapes and modal masses of the blades are set to their design/tuned counterparts while the modal stiffnesses are varied from blade to blade to match the measured natural frequencies. The second approach, based on the maximum likelihood principle, yields estimates of all the structural parameters of the blades through the minimization of a specified “cost function.” The accuracy of these two techniques in predicting the forced response of mistuned bladed disks will be assessed on simple dynamic models of the blades.

No abstract

The focus of the present investigation is on the estimation of the dynamic properties, i.e. masses, stiffnesses, natural frequencies, mode shapes and their statistical distributions, of turbomachine blades to be used in the accurate prediction of the forced response of mistuned bladed disks. As input to this process, it is assumed that the lowest natural frequencies of the blades alone have been experimentally measured, for example in a broach block test. Since the number of measurements is always less than the number of unknowns, this problem is indeterminate in nature. Three distinct approaches will be investigated to resolve the shortfall of data. The first one relies on the imposition of as many constraints as needed to insure a unique solution to this identification problem. Specifically, the mode shapes and modal masses of the blades are set to their design/tuned counterparts while the modal stiffnesses are varied from blade-to-blade to match the measured natural frequencies. The second approach, based on the maximum likelihood principle, yields estimates of all the structural parameters of the blades through the minimization of a specified “cost function”. Finally, the third approach provides a bridge between the first two methods being based on the second but yielding a mistuning model similar to that of the first approach. The accuracy of these three techniques in predicting the forced response of mistuned bladed disks will be assessed on simple dynamic models of the blades.