Development of Air Film Damping for Turbine Engine Applications

The Phase I efforts aimed at establishing the feasibility of Air Film Damping for controlling vibration induced high-cycle fatigue (HCF) in gas turbine engine components. To establish this goal, current commercially available finite element software wasutilized to develop a methodology for predicting the effects of Air Film Damping on dynamic response of simple components such as beams and plates as well as on a more complex component, namely the AADC GMA3007 fan blade. Test articles were fabricatedaccording to the designs and experimental results were compared to the analysis with good correlation. The outcome is a step-by-step procedure for design of Damping Technologies, Incorporated Air Film Damping Systems (DTI/AFDS).The objective of the Phase II program is to apply this methodology to design suitable optimized Air Film Damping Systems for a selected engine component, verify that the predicted performance is achieved, determine and enhance the durability of thesystems, and develop suitable manufacturing techniques for production purposes.