Abstract:
The rise of the Environmentalism in every sector of the Industry has lead the aircraft
and engine manufacturing companies to develop new generations of more
environmentally friendly engines. The companies, encouraged to this purpose, are in a
constant research for new manufacturing and production techniques, in order to improve
their products, from the environmental point of view, by gaining efficiency in the
manufacturing techniques and reduce the fuel consumption and emissions in-flight.
Having in mind this scenario, the sponsor of this Project is interested in understanding
how changing the materials of the blades, titanium alloys currently, for other lighter
materials, such as composites, is going to have an effect in the overall gas turbine
efficiency.
In the particular case of this Project, it will be studied the influence of the Stiffness and
coating Thickness of those non-metallic materials suitable to be employed as coatings
on gas turbine fan blades, from the icing point of view. The work procedure will be
based on a study of Linear Elastic Fracture Mechanics of bi-material junctions and will
extrapolate the general problem to the ice-coatings case, by getting experimental data
from tests carried out in an Icing Tunnel.
It will be observed that the coating Stiffness has an influence on the Adhesion Level of
ice to less stiff materials, if compared with the Adhesion Level of ice to metals. Besides,
it will be described how a 0.5 millimetres thin polymeric coating placed over a metallic
substrate is enough to reduce the Adhesion Level of ice, hiding any effect that the
underneath materials might have on the Adhesion Level.
