Coupled Bending-Bending-Torsion Vibration of a Rotating Pre-Twisted Beam with Aerofoil Cross-Section and Flexible Root by Finite Element Method

The purpose of this paper is to extend a previously published beam model of a turbine blade including the centrifugal force field and root flexibility effects on a finite element model and to demonstrate the performance, accuracy and efficiency of the extended model for computing the natural frequencies. Therefore, only the modifications due to rotation and elastic root are presented in great detail. Considering the shear center effect on the transverse displacements, the geometric stiffness matrix due to the centrifugal force is developed from the geometric strain energy expression based on the large deflections and the increase of torsional stiffness because of the axial stress. In this work, the root flexibility of the blade is idealized by a continuum model unlike the discrete model approach of a combination of translational and rotational elastic springs, as used by other researchers. The cross-section properties of the fir-tree root of the blade considered as an example are expressed by assigning proper order polynomial functions similar to cross-sectional properties of a tapered blade. The correctness of the present extended finite element model is confirmed by the experimental and calculated results available in the literature. Comparisons of the present model results with those in the literature indicate excellent agreement