Wear, 91 (1983) 117 - 130

117

AN

EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION TO RUBBING AT THE BLADE-SEAL AIRCRAFT COMPRESSOR

OF TEMPERATURES INTERFACE IN AN

DUE

A. F. EMERY, J. WOLAK, S. ETEMAD and S. R. CHOI Department (U.S.A.) of Mechanical Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195

(Received January 12, 1983)

Summary Experimentally measured and numerically predicted results are presented for temperatures generated by the rubbing of titanium blade specimens, with different plasma-sprayed tip coatings, against an abradable porous seal material at incursion rates of 0.0127 or 0.0254 mm s-l. The numerically predicted values of blade and seal temperatures closely correspond to those obtained experimentally. During the process of rubbing the seal surface temperature reached a high overall level with a superposed significant increase during each rub followed by a corresponding decrease during the rest of the rotation. Of the wear resistance coating materials used, NiCr-50%SiC showed the most desirable performance. In general, there was a good correspondence between the average transverse force of rubbing and the seal surface temperature.

1. Introduction The efficient operation of turbomachinery, particularly of aircraft propulsion systems, depends to a large degree on the appropriate design and functioning of gas path seals. The need for these seals, the details of their construction and the economic implications have been described by Ludwig and Bill [ 1, 21. One way of increasing the efficiency of the engine is by making the gap between the rotating blade tips and stationary parts very small. Unfortunately this often leads to interference, rubbing and wear at the seal-blade interface, particularly during start-up, maneuvering and landing. Should such rubbing occur, the resulting loss of operational efficiency will be least when only the seal material wears out [ 21, i.e. when the blades form within the seal a groove having smooth walls and a cross section matching the contours of the rotating blade tips. For such sacrificial seals, contact due to misalignment or structural deformation causes only local seal wear and the overall rotor-seal clearance is only slightly
0043-1648/83/$3.00 0 Elsevier Sequoia/Printed in The Netherlands

118

increased [ 1, 21. The design of such abradable seals depends on a knowledge of how the abradable seal material can be made to accommodate the shape of the moving element without wearing it out and without itself becoming undesirably worn. To make such seals would not be difficult were it not that they also have to withstand high temperatures and to be resistant to corrosion and erosion. The last requirement is not compatible with the requirement of seal abradability. In view of this, successful design of such blade-seal systems depends to a large extent on the ability to predict their response as a function of material characteristics under a variety of operating conditions. Unfortunately, because of the complexity of the phenomena, no well-defined analytical techniques exist. The most useful approach is the utilization of finite difference or finite element techniques, provided that such an approach can be substantiated. Some preliminary experimental results obtained on an apparatus simulating a blade-seal configuration and the results of numerical modelling of this system are described in this paper. It is shown that certain coatings of the blade tips give rise to desirable seal wear behavior and negligibly small wear of the blade tip coating. It is also shown that numerical simulation can be used to predict the thermal response of the system.

2. Experimental apparatus and procedure The test facility, shown schematically in Fig. 1, consists of a steel wheel (diameter, 178 mm; rotating at 10 000 rev min-) on which two blades are mounted. The blades, of rectangular cross section (3.18 mm X 12.7 mm) protrude from the wheel by 6.4 mm; the edge of length 12.7 mm is at right angles to the direction of motion and parallel to the seal surface. Only one blade was allowed to rub the seal material: the other was for balancing purposes only. The seal material was mounted on a dynamometer and fed toward the blade at a fixed rate. The surface of seal material subjected to rubbing was viewed by two optical pyrometers; their points of focus and directions of viewing are illustrated in Fig. 2. Some experiments were performed in which one of the pyrometers viewed the blade tip through a hole (3 mm in diameter) in the seal. By this means the instantaneous temperature of the blade tip as it passed the hole could be measured during
WHEEL SEAL SPECIMEN HEAD

DYNAMO.

OF FEEDING BLADE SIDE V1E.W FRONT VIEW SPECIMEN

Fig. 1. Schematic

view of the experimental

apparatus.

119

DIRECTION I NC

OF

RUBB

PYROMETER

Fig. 2. Seal specimen showing rub surface areas where temperatures the optical pyrometers.

are monitored

by

the abrading process. The blade tip velocity was maintained constant at 100 m s-l and the incursion rate was set at either 0.0127 or 0.0254 mm s-l ; the maximum incursion depth was limited to 0.64 mm. The normal and transverse (or shear) components of the forces of blade tip-seal interaction along the x and z directions respectively, as shown in Fig. 2, were measured by a strain gauge dynamometer having a natural frequency of 21.4 kHz in the normal and 7.1 kHa in the transverse directions with the seal specimen attached. Figure 3 illustrates a typical dynamometer output. It is important to note that the forces are quite high and suggest that substantial frictional heating will occur at the blade-seal interface. A fuller discussion of the force measurement and the effects of the incursion rate may be found in ref. 3. In all cases the seal material was Chromalloy (80%Ni-20%Cr) (Pratt and Whitney Aircraft specification 1090-2) and the blades were made of Ti-6Al-4V. In some cases the blades were bare, but generally a coating was plasma sprayed onto the tip of the blade; the coating materials used are listed in Table 1.

3. Experimental

results and discussion

The experimental results, shown in Table 1, are grouped according to the material used for the blade tip coating. The wear was determined by measuring the mass loss of each specimen. The decrease in the blade length due to wear can be evaluated from the knowledge of the blade tip geometry, the density of its material and the blade tip mass loss wl. However, this work does not consider the changes in the effective gap brought about by the generation of the groove in the seal or shortening (due to wear)

120

0.25

0.50

0. 75

1.00

1.25

7 IME <msec> Fig. 3. Characteristic dynamometer (run 19; incursion depth, 0.5 mm).

traces for the forces exerted on the seal specimen

of the blade. The class of seal groove generated in the seal during each experiment was chosen visually as follows: class A, acceptable surface finish, where the surface roughness and appearance are similar to the unrubbed seal surface; class B, smeared seal surface; class C, smeared surface with signs of elevated temperatures and non-uniform material removal, i.e. large pieces of the smeared surface are removed in the form of chunks, creating very rough surface finish. Figures 4(a) and 4(b) show the relationship between the peak seal temperature (i.e. the maximum temperature recorded at point 0 (see Fig. 2) just after the blade has passed) and the associated transverse and normal forces respectively for two different incursion rates. As suggested by the analytical results reported in ref. 4, the transverse force and temperature appear to be reasonably well correlated. This is to be expected since this temperature is due to the frictional energy which is directly proportional to the transverse (shear) force, i.e. F, = pFn. Since the coefficient of friction, cc, varies according to the conditions of rubbing, there does not appear to be any good correlation between the temperature and the normal force, other than a general tendency for the temperature to increase with increasing normal force.

121 TABLE 1 Experimental data Blade tip coating Bare Run i (mm s-l) 0.0127 0.0254 0.0254 0.0254 0.0254 0.0127 0.0254 0.0254 0.0127 0.0254 0.0254 0.0127 0.0127 0.0127 0.0254 wzlwl Classa F,b (N) B B-C C B-C C 6 11 4 19 28 230 42 85 302 70 B-C B-C B-C B B C B-C A A A 400 257 424 478 346 438 408 519 515 333 350 422 62 38 225 Ftb Tz,avpb Tz,~~ (N) (C) (C) 78 66 680 103 820 122 1170 109 810 1390 1050 1260 1260 1330 1220 810 1330 1160 580 710

zg) 5 7 1 2 12 14 16 5 5 1 4 4 1 3

yig)

24 15 13 14 I.9 25 21 17 23 18 20 29 30 26 16

222 44 239 34 Broken 63 Torn 73 153 68 93 139 230 165 338 302 210 -

79%WC-12%TiC4%TaC-5%Ni A1203-13%Ti02

83 159 127 1110 94 48 111 810 530 870

AM& 92%WC-5.5%Co2.5%TaC NiCr-5O%SiC

89 18 210 12 200 48 460

aThe classes are described in Section 3. bThe values of these parameters were measured at an incursion depth of 0.5 mm. Only run with solid lubricant.

Figure 5 illustrates the typical variation in seal specimen temperature during 1 rev of the wheel when the depth of incursion was 0.55 mm for a constant rate of incursion of 0.0127 mm s- . The temperature is in the neighborhood of 900 C until the blade begins to rub, when it rises to approximately 1000 C. It then monotonically decreases because of radiative, convective and conductive heat losses from the seal surface. When the balancing blade passes the seal (indicated by the discontinuity in the trace at 3.6 ms) there is no noticeable change in the cooling rate, suggesting that a blade passage does not appreciably alter the convective heat transfer by changing the local air velocity distribution. Figure 6 shows a record of the temperature history of a bare blade tip during rubbing for the whole period of incursion; this was measured by focusing the pyrometer through a hole in the seal onto the moving blade tip surface. For the slow incursion rate (0.0127 mm s-l) the temperature appears to have almost stabilized by the time when the test was terminated. By contrast, the temperature for the high incursion rate test was still increasing rapidly at the end of the test. Investigation of the seal specimens generally showed that those which were subjected to the lower incursion rates had a smoother rubbing pattern and had less surface damage than those seals exposed to a high incursion rate; the latter often showed a

122
1400 8 1200 i

*$'a .Q / ,;+

6
A

fd 600 111

23 Q
24 2s 29 30 0 d &

13 0 16 h 16 0 19 * 26 t 21 A

0
I

01 0

50

100

150

200

(a)

AVG.

TRANS.

FORCE

<N>

1400y

A
1200 G 0 A 1000/

k
A %/ 4

0 a (b)

1 la0

i wa

AVG.
(b) ef-

Fig. 4. {a) Effect of the average transverse force on the peak seal temperature; fect of the average normal force on the peak seal temperature.
substantial

mount of surface fra~tu~ng, accompanied by tears within a considerable fraction of the seal surface. Figures 7 - 10 show the experimentally measured seal and blade side (see Fig. 11, point B) temperatures generated during rubbing of the seal by different blade tip coatings at specified incursion rates. In all these figures, the precipitous drop at the end of the curves represents the cooling down

123
1000
I-

fj 0

ii! ? 2 if 5
I-

940 920

T I ME (msec)

Fig. 5. Characteristic peak seal temperature history during 1 rev.

1200 -

20

40

TIME

(set)

Fig. 6. Characteristic blade tip temperature history from the start of contact to a full incursion of 0.63 mm for incursion rates of 0.0125 mm s-l () and 0.0254 mm s-l (- -- -).

which occurs after the incursion was stopped and the rubbing action gradually ceased through spark-out. It may be noted that the values of the blade side temperature (which is representative of the temperature of the exposed portion of the blade) shown on Figs. 7 - 10 are substantially less than the blade tip temperatures shown in Fig. 6. Figures 8 - 10 show that the blade tip coatings significantly delay (by approximately 1000 rev) the rise in the seal surface temperature, but then the temperature rises rather rapidly to a high value. By contrast, for the bare blade, there is a rapid rise in temperature to about 700 C and then a very slow rise to approximately 1000 C. Although the precise mechanism for material removal is not known, it appears that in some cases, during the initial period of rubbing, the coating abrades the seal and this action requires relatively small forces of interaction, resulting in low energy dissipation;

124
u

1250-

---. -.

5.~1 After Rubbing

Smcl Bled. Poor Good 0.f.for.r Sidm COCcI& Co&a& Rubbing

REVOLUiIONS
Fig. 7. Seal and blade side (Fig. 11, point B) temperatures
r\1250r
0 0

for the bare blade {run 13).

_
-. -.-.-.

srol Aftw
SIcrl Blodr tkforr SA& contacIt Contaot

Rubbing Rubbing

lB00-

Poor Good

E 2 x58-

2 f

500-

iFI b

ZSB-

REVOLUTIONS
Fig. 8. Sea1 and blade side (Fig. 11, point B) temperatures for a blade coated with 79%WClZ%TiC-~%Ta~-5%NiC (run 19).

subsequently the coating begins to come off the blade tip or it becomes loaded with debris; in either case the result is a rapid increase in the forces of interaction and a consequent rapid temperature rise. Comparable effects were noted for the lower incursion rate. The peak seal temperature, which was measured just after the blade had passed, was strongly dependent on the incursion rate. When a solid lubricant was used on both the seal and the coated blade (run 291, the blade-seal combination behaved in a very similar way to the bare blade, in terms of both the temperature history and the peak temperatures but not from the point of view of the wear of the blade or of the seal. In this case the lubricant reduced the coefficient of friction which in turn resulted in a lower rate of material removal from the seal for a given normal

125
A12s0 0 0 "llaala 1 E 2 750 I
s.01 Afhr Rubbing Rubbing

_-.%a1 &form _._.-. Bl& Sld,

Poor ContDct Goad Contoot

2000

4000

8000

8000

J 10000

REVOLUTIONS
Fig. 9. Seal and blade side (Fig. 11, point B) temperatures for a blade coated with A1203 (run 23).
A
u 0

1250---_.--

Sun1 After
kol El&

Rubbing Bmfocm Rubbing Sldm

Poor contoot Goad Contact

1500

3000

4500

6000

7500

9000

REVOLUTIONS
Fig. 10. Seal and blade side (Fig. 11, point B) temperatures NiCr-50%SiC and lubricated (run 29). for a blade coated with

force. Because of the fixed incursion rate, the force components rose to about ten times their value for the unlubricated case (runs 26 and 30) and essentially equalled the corresponding values of force components associated with the bare (unlubricated) system (run 24). 4. Numerical modelling In order to understand the material removal mechanisms which take place during the process of rubbing and to predict the resulting wear under a wide variety of conditions, it is desirable to create a mathematical model

126

of the process. Unfortunately, the process is so complex that only a numerical simulation can be used. The blade-seal combination is modelled using the finite difference grid illustrated in Fig. 11. The temperature field is as-

room

air

Fig. 11. Schematic diagram of a blade-seal specimen separated by the interfacial zone (greatly exaggerated) where frictional heat is generated.

sumed to be two dimensional and the temperatures are calculated at the nodal points, i.e. at the intersection of the grid lines. The same grid size was used for both the blade and the seal. The back side of the blade convects and radiates heat to the air with a specified heat transfer coefficient. When the blade tip is not in contact with the seal material, additional heat is lost by convection and radiation. A complete description of the method of estimating the various surface heat transfer coefficient is given in ref. ?. The frictionally generated heat at the interface is apportioned into Qir and Qiz; Qi, is conducted into the blade and Qi, into the seal. The ratio Qir/Qiz depends on the temperature gradients in the material and the thermal contact resistance at the interface. All the thermal properties were evaluated at the local nodal temperatures. Because there is a forced air circulation in the apparatus and the air temperature therein was essentially the same as room temperature, the latter was assumed to be the ambient temperature throughout the experiment. 4.1. Contact resistance The most uncertain part of the analysis is the apportionmentSof the frictionally generated heat between the seal and the blade, i.e. Qir and Qiz. From a modelling point of view this is most conveniently done by assuming that the heat is generated in a thin zone between the bulk of the two materials and apportioned according to the thermal contact resistance existing at the interface of the two materials. The classical procedure is to

127

assume that both materials have the same interfacial temperature and that the heat generated is apportioned according to the ratio (12 Ip Ic1)12 / + (k,p2c2)*} [5]. This method is based on the contact of semi{(k,wd* infinite bodies which have the same initial temperatures. For intermittent contact, the method must be modified to obtain realistic results. Each surface contains asperities which come in contact during the rubbing. Plastic deformation and frictional effects release energy which flows through the material asperities and through the gas which fills the interstitial spaces. The combination of the conducting metal asperities and the gas within the gap between the blade tip and the seal is assumed to have zero heat capacity and an effective overall conductivity K giving rise to the temperature distribution
T=-

Qx2 + ;
2K

2qP T2 -- T, + K

+ Ti

(1)

where the heat-generating zone has a thickness 21, q is the rate of heat generated per unit volume of interfacial heating zone and T1 and T2 are the blade and seal material surface temperatures respectively at the edges of the zone. The heat fluxes into the two material faces are given by
72 = TI + 5

21/K

2A

(2)

and
TI qi2 = T2 + 5

21/K

2A

(3)

where the quantity 21/K represents the contact resistance R which must be specified to solve the thermal problem and Q represents the rate of frictionally generated heat. Although this simplified approach neglects the complex effects taking place at the interface of the rubbing materials, it serves to relate the fluxes to the overall heat generation and the more easily measured or estimated thermal contact resistance. When the surface roughness profiles are known, R can be estimated. In the absence of such detailed information, values of R in the range lo-- 10V4 m* K W- were taken to be representative of contact conditions which may exist during the experiment [4, 61. The rate of heat generation is the sum of the energy dissipation due to frictional surface effects and that due to subsurface (plastic) deformation less any energy carried away by the rub debris. Because of the very small incursion per pass and the minute mass removed, this latter energy was negligible in comparison with the other quantities. In general the subsurface heat generation is difficult to evaluate and is often assumed to be zero [7]. In the present case, the measured transverse force multiplied by the rubbing velocity is the total heat generated from all sources and there is no need to determine each source separately.

128

5. Numerical

results

The transverse force was recorded as a function of time and has been used to compute a time-varying frictional source. The only unknown is then the contact resistance. The time histories of the temperatures have been computed by using the methods explained in ref. 4, and results for points B and S of Fig. 11 are shown in Figs. 7 - 10 by the symbol 1 for the two extreme values of the contact resistance. The tip and base of the symbols correspond to poor (10e4 m2 K WP ) and good (lo- 7 m2 K W- ) contact resistances respectively. For the bare blade (Fig. 7), the numerically predicted temperatures are lower than the corresponding values obtained experimentally. The underestimate at the beginning of rubbing (0 - 1500 rev) is probably due to the inaccuracy in estimating the transverse force, when the period of rubbing is short (less than 60 /JS). The smoothness of the predicted temperatures contrasts with the stepped experimental data. This smoothness is due to the fact that in the numerical modelling smooth continuous rubbing without any contact instability was assumed. For the coated blade (run 19) the numerically predicted temperatures (Fig. 8) for seal and blade are lower than the experimental values. An examination of the seal specimen revealed a non-uniform surface (class C). The blade discoloration, due to temperature effects, was also non-uniform and indicated that the temperature was highest on the side onto which the pyrometer was focused. Run 23 (Fig. 9) showed good agreement between measured and predicted results, with a slight overestimation during the middle of the rubbing process. The measured blade side temperatures were in general less than the predicted values. An observation of the blade heating discoloration showed slightly lower temperature at the side than in the central region. Another possible contribution to the present discrepancy may be due to the thermal properties of the coating material and this matter is presently under study. For the case where the solid lubricant was employed (run 29), the results (Fig. 10) showed behavior similar to that of the bare blade. Because of the conformity of the solid lubricant, a good contact did exist at the interface. In the cases where thermoelastic instability (local heating) is not significant the experimental results show a good agreement with those predicted numerically.

6. Conclusions Although limited in scope, the experimental data presented here support previous observations [8, 91 that the high specific energy of groove formation is associated with high temperatures at the material interface. Blades coated with some wear-resistant materials were shown to perform substantially better than bare blades, but some coatings, e.g. Al@-13%TiO,

129

were found to be ineffective. Of the coating materials employed in the present investigation, NiCr-50%SiC (without solid lubricant) showed the best performance. Numerical predictions of both blade and seal temperatures are in good qualitative agreement for all the materials tested. Some uncertainty about the thermal behavior of the coating exists, but it appears that the thermal conductivity of the coating may be responsible for most of the differences between the predicted and the measured values. The agreement between the measured and predicted temperatures for different conditions of rubbing supports the numerical results previously reported [4] and substantiates the thermal model of the blade-seal interface. The major work which remains is to incorporate these experimental results and the thermal model into a complete thermostructural model which can account for the mechanical behavior of the seal and blade material while undergoing the process of rubbing. This will require incorporation of the elastic-plastic properties and of the high temperature effects on both thermal and mechanical properties.

Acknowledgments The work reported here has been sponsored by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Lewis Research Center. Mr. A. F. Kascak and Dr. L. J. Kiraly were the program managers.

References
1 L. P. Ludwig and R. C. Bill, Gas path sealing in turbine engines, NASA Tech. Memo. 73890, 1978 (National Aeronautics and Space Administration). 2 R. C. Bill and L. P. Ludwig, Wear of seal materials used in aircraft propulsion systems, Wear, 59 (1980) 165 - 189. 3 J. Wolak, A. F. Emery, S. Etemad and S. R. Choi, Preliminary results on the abradability of porous, sintered seal material, J. Lubr. Technol., to be published. 4 A. F. Emery, S. Etemad and J. Wolak, Interfacial temperatures and surface heat fluxes during a blade-seal rubbing process, 16th AZAA Thermophysics Conf, Palo Alto, CA, 1981, Paper AIAA-81-1165. 5 H. S. Carslaw and J. C. Jaeger, Conduction of Heat in Solids, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1959. 6 W. M. Rosenhow and J. P. Hartnett, Handbook of Heat Transfer, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1973. 7 F. E. Kennedy, Surface temperature in sliding systems - a finite element analysis, ASME Paper 80-C2/Lub-28; ASME-ASLE Znt. Lubrication Conf., San Francisco, CA, 1980. 8 W. F. Laverty, Compressor seal rub energetics study, NASA Contract. Rep. CR159424, May 1978 (Pratt and Whitney Aircraft Group). 9 R. C. Bill and D. W. Wisander, Friction and wear of several compressor gas-path seal materials, NASA Tech. Paper 1128, 1978 (National Aeronautics and Space Administration).

130

Appendix A: nomenclature

k F,
2, K
1

a,
Q
R T W P P

specific heat capacity (J kg- K-) force components (normal and tangential respectively) incursion rate (mm s-l) thermal conductivities (W m- K- ) half-thickness of the interface zone (m) heat flux (W me2) rate of heat generation (W) thermal contact resistance (m2 K W-l) temperature (C) wear mass of material (seal or blade tip) (mg) F,/F,, coefficient of friction density (kg m--3)

(N)

Subscripts average avg max maximum thermal input to the surface blade and seal specimens respectively