Design and Strength Analysis of Curved-Root Concept for Compressor Rotor Blade in Gas Turbine

The motivation of the article is fatigue and fretting issue of the compressor rotor blades and disks. These phenomena can be caused by high contact pressures leading to fretting occurring on contact faces in the lock (blade-disk connection, attachment of the blade to the disk). Additionally, geometrical notches and high cyclic loading can initiate cracks and lead to engine failures. The paper presents finite element static and modal analyses of the axial compressor 3^rd rotor stage (disk and blades) of the K-15 turbine engine. The analyses were performed for the original trapezoidal/dovetail lock geometry and its two modifications (new lock concepts) to optimize the stress state of the disk-blade assembly. The cyclic symmetry formulation was used to reduce modelling and computational effort.