NDE using sensor based approach to propulsion health monitoring of a turbine engine disk

Abstract

Rotor health monitoring and on-line damage detection have been increasingly gaining interest to manufacturers of aircraft engines, primarily to increase safety of operation and lower the high maintenance costs. But health monitoring in the presence of scatter in the loading conditions, crack size, disk geometry, and material property is rather challenging. However, detection factors that cause fractures and hidden internal cracks can be implemented via noninvasive types of health monitoring and or nondestructive evaluation techniques. These evaluations go further to inspect materials discontinuities and other anomalies that have grown to become critical defects that can lead to failure. To address the bulk of these concerning issues and understand the technical aspects leading to these outcomes, a combined analytical and experimental study is being thought. Results produced from the experiments such as blade tip displacement and other data collected from tests conducted at the NASA Glenn Research Center's Rotordynamics Laboratory, a high precision spin rig, are evaluated, discussed and compared with data predicted from finite element analysis simulating the engine rotor disk spinning at various rotational speeds. Further computations using the progressive failure analysis (PFA) approach with GENOA code [6] to additionally assess the structural response, damage initiation, propagation, and failure criterion are also performed. This study presents an inclusive evaluation of an on-line health monitoring of a rotating disk and an examination for the capability of the in-house spin system in support of ongoing research under the NASA Integrated Vehicle Health Management (IVHM) program.