AEROELASTIC MODAL CHARACTERISTICS OF MISTUNED BLADE ASSEMBLIES - MODE LOCALIZATION AND LOSS OF EIGENSTRUCTURE

An investigation of the effects of small mistuning on the aeroelastic modes of bladed-disk assemblies with aerodynamic coupling between blades is presented. The cornerstone of the approach is the use and development of perturbation methods that exhibit the crucial role of the interblade coupling and yield general findings regarding mistuning effects. It is shown that blade assemblies with weak aerodynamic interblade coupling are highly sensitive to small blade mistuning and that their dynamics are qualitatively altered in the following ways: the regular pattern that characterizes the root locus of the tuned aeroelastic eigenvalues in the complex plane is totally lost; the aeroelastic mode shapes become severely localized to only a few blades of the assembly and lose their constant interblade phase angle feature; curve veering phenomena take place when the eigenvalues are plotted vs a mistuning parameter.