Interaction of concurrent forced response and flutter phenomena in a compressor stage

This paper studies a subsonic compressor case with concurrent forced response and flutter by using the Harmonic Balance method, and was inspired by historical experimental data. Forced response was observed when the rotating speed was approaching a crossing on the Campbell diagram, where flutter appeared to be suppressed. CFD simulations are conducted by using a quasi-3D configuration at the mid-span of one stage of a 3.5-stage compressor. Due to the constraint of frequency domain methods, the research is conducted in the vicinity of the 1T-44EO crossing with a small frequency shift between flutter frequency and external excitation frequency. The influence from flutter to forced response is observed: a one-way crosstalk at forced response frequency is observed, presented as the anomaly of unsteady velocity and unsteady pressure near the rear section of rotor blades and in the rotor wake region. The anomaly is speculated as the presence of increasing intensity of shedding vortices induced by the vibration of the blade. To further prove the impact of this viscous effect, a numerical experiment was performed with inviscid rotor blades. In contrast to the crosstalk at forced response frequency, no obvious influence on the unsteady behavior is detected at the flutter frequency, and this observation is confirmed at multiple vibration amplitudes. Considering the relationship between unsteady pressure at flutter frequency and aerodynamic damping, we conclude the influence of forced response on the aerodynamic damping is negligible. In addition, a linearity of unsteady pressure at the flutter frequency vs. vibration amplitude is uncovered. The discoveries provide a proof to linearity assumption and single-frequency simplification widely adopted by industry in flutter simulations.