Efficient Fracture Design for Complex Turbine Engine Components

Abstract

Many high-energy turbine engine components are fracture critical. However, the complex three-dimensional (3d) geometries and stress fields associated with these components can make accurate fracture analysis impractical. This paper describes a new computational approach to efficient fracture design for complex turbine engine components. The approach employs a powerful 3D graphical user interface (GUI) for manipulation of geometry models and calculated component stresses to formulate simpler 2D fracture models. New weight function stress intensity factor solutions are derived to address stress gradients that vary in all directions on the fracture plane.