Design and Optimization of Hybrid Composite Interface joint in Aircraft Engine Fan Blade

Abstract

All airline companies in the world have struggled with bird strikes regularly. It is the most important design criterion for the fan blades of aircraft engines. As it is not possible to manufacture and test aircraft engines again and again for small design changes, through the simulation analysis, by applying suitable design and manufacturing techniques for the blade, it is possible to investigate how to decrease the effect of the bird strike on a jet engine. Currently, a laminated carbon composite fan blade is being used inside the aircraft engine which shows a tendency to delaminate under the bird strike loading. newlineThe present research provides a hybrid composite fan blade made of two fibers as a replacement to the single fiber composite fan blade now in use to prevent delamination challenges. In the first stage of this research, representative composite coupon models for combinations of hybrid fiber joint interface configurations were created and linear static analysis was performed with representative loads and boundary conditions. For the validation of the simulation methodology, a few coupons were manufactured and tested in the laboratory. Further, dynamic bird strike analysis on representative sub-element level composite models was carried out in the second stage with various interface joint configurations. Next, the plate-level representative composite blade model was developed with the original dimensions of the aircraft engine fan blade, and bird strike analysis was performed for the shortlisted interface joint configurations. The behaviour of the representative plate with a hybrid interface was studied, and the levels of interlaminar shear strain were checked. Response surface analyses were done to investigate the relationship between different input parameters (impact location, joint region size, shortlisted interface joint designs) and the outcome i.e. interlaminar shear strain level. Some of the shortlisted cases do show significant promise of being damage tolerant under bird strike loading.