Patent Grant
9863252
The invention relates to a fan disk of a turbojet type engine, this disk being a single-piece blisk, in other words it comprises a hub and blades that form a single indissociable part.
A twin spool turbofan type engine 1 like that in
The core engine flow passes through a low pressure compressor 4 located immediately after the fan 3 while the fan flow is forced backwards to generate an additional thrust directly by being blown around the core engine flow.
The core engine flow then flows through a high pressure compressor 6, before reaching a chamber 7 in which its combustion takes place, after injection and atomisation of a fuel. After combustion, this core engine flow expands in a high pressure turbine 8 and then in a low pressure turbine to rotate the compression stages and the fan, before being expelled towards the rear of the engine to generate a thrust.
Each turbine and each compressor comprises a sequence of stages each comprising a series of blades oriented radially and at a uniform spacing around an engine rotation shaft. This central shaft or rotor that extends along a longitudinal AX axis supports the rotating elements of the turbine and the rotating elements of the compressor and the fan.
The fan blades may be elements added onto a disk called the fan disk that is firstly fixed for example by a splined connection to the engine shaft. After the disk has been fixed, the blades are fitted from the front of the disk by engaging them in longitudinal grooves formed around the periphery of the disk and that are called slots.
In the case of a fan with a single-piece blisk, the series of fan blades is fitted on a hub forming a single and indissociable part with it.
A part of such a single blisk corresponding to an angular sector around the AX axis is shown diagrammatically in
If a foreign body is ingested into the turbojet, the foreign body collides firstly with a set of fan blades, giving rise to a mechanical stress that can cause degradation of one or several blades, or a blade may even be torn off.
In the case of a single-piece blisk, as in the case shown in
This situation is due to the fact that the single-piece structure increases the stiffness of the blades 3 at their connection 13 with the hub 12 forming the disk. This tends to increase the mechanical stress when the blades 3 are highly loaded in bending, which is the case when a foreign body is ingested. A blade can be torn off due to this stress concentration at the bottom of the blade.
The purpose of the invention is to disclose a solution for reducing the stress at the bottom of a blade, particularly following ingestion of a foreign body.
The invention relates to a single-piece fan blisk for a turbofan such as a turbojet, this single-piece blisk comprising a hub with a general shape of revolution about a rotation axis, this hub comprising an external peripheral face extending radially towards the rotation axis at an upstream face and a downstream face both of which are in the form of rings, this hub supporting blades each comprising a base through which it is connected to an external peripheral face and a leading edge and a trailing edge that are radially oriented, characterised in that the spacing between the upstream and the downstream face is less than the distance separating the leading edge from the trailing edge of each blade along the rotation axis.
The length of the anchorage of blades in the hub of the single-piece blisk is thus reduced to increase the flexibility of the blade about the rotation axis and about a radial axis to facilitate absorption of energy resulting from a shock. This arrangement thus significantly reduces stresses at the bottom of the blades without modifying their geometry relative to the fluid flow in the jet in operation.
The invention also relates to a blisk thus defined, in which the upstream face of the hub is located along the rotation axis between the leading edges of the blades and the trailing edges of the blades, and in which each blade comprises a prolongation on the side of its leading edge towards the rotation axis through which it is connected to the upstream face.
The invention also relates to a blisk thus defined, in which the downstream face of the hub is located along the rotation axis between the leading edges of the blades and the trailing edges of the blades, and in which each blade comprises a prolongation on the side of its trailing edge towards the rotation axis through which it is connected to the downstream face.
The invention also relates to a blisk thus defined, in which the ratio of the length separating the leading edge of the blade from the upstream face of the hub divided by the length separating the leading edge from the trailing edge of the blade, is between two tenths and four tenths.
The invention also relates to a blisk thus defined, in which the ratio of the length separating the trailing edge of the blade from the downstream face of the hub divided by the length separating the leading edge from the trailing edge of the blade, is between two tenths and four tenths.
The invention also relates to a blisk thus defined, in which the ratio of the sum of the length separating the leading edge of the blade from the upstream face of the hub and the length separating the trailing edge of the blade from the downstream face of the hub, divided by the length separating the leading edge from the trailing edge of the blade, is between two tenths and four tenths.
The invention also relates to a turbofan fan comprising a blisk thus defined.
The invention also relates to a jet engine, comprising a single-piece blisk thus defined.
The single-piece blisk according to the invention that is partially shown in
The hub 16 that is generally annular in shape extending around its rotation AX axis, forms an assembly with the blades 17 that it supports, in other words a single-piece derived from a single fabrication process such as a three-dimensional milling process.
The hub 16 of the single-piece blisk 14 comprises an external peripheral face 18 with a general shape of revolution about the AX axis, that is tapered in shape in this case, and from which the bases of each blade 17 start, that are at a spacing from each other about the rotation AX axis.
This external peripheral face 18 extends radially upstream towards the AX axis at a ring-shaped upstream face 19, and it extends radially downstream towards the AX axis at a downstream face 21 that is also ring-shaped. The upstream and downstream faces are in the form of approximately plane rings centred on the AX axis and oriented perpendicular to this axis.
Each blade comprises a leading edge 22 and a trailing edge 23, the leading edges being the edges located on the upstream side to face an incident air flow, while the trailing edges are downstream from the leading edges relative to the direction of the air flow passing through the jet.
As can be seen in these
Each blade is connected through its base to the external peripheral surface 18 of the hub, but this external peripheral surface 18 is shorter than the blades along the AX axis; the length separating the upstream face from the downstream face is shorter than the length or cord of the blades projected onto the AX axis.
The blade can thus be arranged to go beyond the side of its leading edge 22 by a length L1 separating this leading edge from the upstream face 19, this length L1 thus corresponding to the length of the upstream recess of the hub 18. If the length separating the leading edge 22 from the trailing edge 23 of the blade in the region of the external face of the hub 18 is denoted L2, the proportions of the blade advantageously satisfy the criterion 0.2<L1/L2<0.4.
The blade may similarly be arranged to project beyond the side of its trailing edge 23 by a length L1′ separating this trailing edge from the downstream face 21, this length L1′ thus corresponding to the length of the downstream recess of the hub 18. The proportions of the blade advantageously satisfy the criterion 0.2<L1′/L2<0.4.
When the blade is designed to project beyond the side of its leading edge and also beyond the side of its trailing edge, its proportions are chosen to satisfy the criterion 0.2<(L1+L1′)/L2<0.4.
More specifically, if these length ratios are too small in other words less than two tenths, the gain in flexibility of the blade is insufficient to significantly improve its resistance to shocks. On the other hand, when these length ratios are too high, in other words more than four tenths, the suppleness or flexibility is too high and can penalise the mechanical resistance to shocks.
Each blade is thus connected to the hub 18 of the blisk through the central region of its base, which makes it less stiff in bending around the AX axis but also less stiff in torsion about the radial axis that supports it.
This reduction in stiffness, in other words this increase in the flexibility of the blades, particularly at the leading and trailing edges, improves the mechanical resistance of these blades to shocks applied to them following ingestion of a foreign body in the jet.
In practice when such shocks occur, the stress concentration zones are the connection zones of each blade with the upstream face and the downstream face of the hub. These stress concentration zones are shown by the four dotted circles in
These stress concentrations are limited by advantageously prolonging the blades towards the rotation axis so that they are connected with the offset upstream face and the offset downstream face. These blade prolongations towards the rotation axis AX are shown diagrammatically in
Each prolongation P can thus add an additional radial fillet segment from the blade to the hub to increase the total fillet length (measured along the line of the curve), without increasing the fillet connection length projected onto the rotation axis.
Each blade prolongation can thus avoid the formation of stress concentration zones, while making sure that the flexibility of the blades about the AX axis is increased and that the torsional flexibility about the radial axis is increased.
In the embodiment in
Each blade 17 thus projects beyond the downstream face 21 to which it is connected, which prevents the appearance of stress concentrations at the connection of each blade with the junction of the external peripheral face and the downstream face. These blades are thus anchored into the hub with increased flexibility to facilitate absorption of energy resulting from shocks in cases in which a foreign body is ingested.
In the example in
In the various examples, each blade is connected to the peripheral face of the hub by a curved region with a first radius of curvature, and each blade prolongation is connected to the upstream and/or downstream face of the hub through another curved portion with a second radius of curvature that may be different from the first.
In general, there is no important stress affecting the choice of the second radius of curvature that may be chosen such that the ratio of the second radius of curvature to the first radius of curvature remains within twenty five hundredths and four.
| Number | Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| 14 61070 | Nov 2014 | FR | national |
| Number | Name | Date | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2479039 | Val Cronstedt | Aug 1949 | A |
| 2657902 | Williams | Nov 1953 | A |
| 5108261 | Ress, Jr. | Apr 1992 | A |
| 5480284 | Wadia | Jan 1996 | A |
| 5594288 | Husain | Jan 1997 | A |
| 20150176415 | Nucci | Jun 2015 | A1 |
| 20150267545 | Merlot | Sep 2015 | A1 |
| Number | Date | Country |
|---|---|---|
| 2 738 392 | Jun 2014 | EP |
| 2009-197649 | Sep 2009 | JP |
| 2013050724 | Apr 2013 | WO |
| Entry |
|---|
| Search Report issued in French Patent Application No. FR 1461070 dated Sep. 2, 2015. |
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 20160138403 A1 | May 2016 | US |
