Most modern aircraft engines use turbomachinery as major components. General Electric’s T700 series of engines, turboshaft engines commonly used in military helicopters, are no different. Due to the current political challenges of the day, many United States military missions take place in dusty environments, such as deserts. These environments create major issues in turboshaft engines, particularly in the compressor section, as the engines ingest the dust particles during their operation, damaging the rotor blades and stator vanes. This damage accumulates over time, and causes performance losses, and can potentially lead to catastrophic failure if left unchecked.
The objective of this thesis is to begin quantifying the performance loss caused by this damage. To this end, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is used to simulate the flow over an undamaged blade and compare the results to a simulation of the same blade having accumulated varying degrees of damage. Due to difficulties in obtaining the geometry for the T700, simulations are instead conducted using NASA’s Rotor 37 as a surrogate. The results of the simulations show, as expected, performance declines as the blade roughness increases as a result of particle damage. The simulations provide affirmation to what has been observed previously in experimental environments, though our baseline results deviate slightly from previous literature.
