Time-domain harmonic balance method for aerodynamic and aeroelastic simulations of turbomachinery flows

A time-domain Harmonic Balance method is applied to simulate the blade row interactions and vibrations of state-of-the-art industrial turbomachinery configurations. The present harmonic balance approach is a time-integration scheme that turns a periodic or almost-periodic flow problem into the coupled resolution of several steady computations at different time samples of the period of interest. The coupling is performed by a spectral time-derivative operator that appears as a source term of all the steady problems. These are converged simultaneously making the method parallel in time. In this paper, a non-uniform time sampling is used to improve the robustness and accuracy regardless of the considered frequency set. Blade row interactions are studied within a 3.5-stage high-pressure axial compressor representative of the high-pressure core of modern turbofan engines. Comparisons with reference time-accurate computations show that four frequencies allow a fair match of the compressor performance, with a reduction of the computational time up to a factor 30. Finally, an aeroelastic study is performed for a counter-rotating fan stage, where the rear blade is submitted to a prescribed harmonic vibration along its first torsion mode. The aerodynamic damping is analysed, showing possible flutter.