Next to excitation forces and the dynamic properties of mistuned structures the damping behavior is a key feature to evaluate the dynamic turbine blade response and thus the HCF life of a bladed disk (blisk). Just as the determination of the mistuning properties and the assessment of the vibration excitation, the evaluation of damping is also subject to uncertainty especially considering the wide operating range of a small radial turbine of a turbocharger. Since the total damping is composed of material damping, structural damping and aerodynamic damping, which are affected by parameters, like the eigenform of the vibration, the magnitude of the vibration amplitude and aerodynamic properties, the total damping can be strongly dependent on the operating conditions.
The study at hand provides results from investigations that allow estimating the contribution of aerodynamic damping on the total damping. Experimental and numerical analysis of radial turbines from turbochargers for vehicular engines with variable turbine inlet vanes were performed. Measurements under different environmental conditions such as at rest and during operation, as well as unsteady CFD calculations and, coupled flow and structural calculations were carried out.
A change in total damping could be found depending on the density of the surrounding gas by vibration measurements in operation on the hot gas test bench. But it was also shown that the total damping is decisively influenced by the mistuning of the structure. On one side the structural damping is varied by the variation in mistuned blade vibration amplitudes and otherwise the aerodynamic damping is influenced by the different inter blade phase angles (IBPA) due to the mistuning, which is a symptom of geometric differences and material in-homogeneity in the wheels.
Finally, the estimated total damping values were utilized in forced response calculations using a mistuned FE-model of a real turbine and excitation forces from unsteady CFD calculation. The magnitudes of the measured vibration amplitudes were compared with results from numerical analysis to validate the numerical model with focus on the investigation about the total damping. The deviation between the results was ±10% for different eigenforms and excitation orders.
