An Efficient Approach for Parametric Modeling and Prediction of the Hollow Blade Manufacture Shape

In recent years, hollow fan blades have been widely used to meet the requirements of aeroengines for lightweight and better performance. However, the hollow fan blade will change from the manufacture shape to the operating shape with large deformations during operation. This deviation, if neglected, will lead to deceptive results for structural and aerodynamic analysis. However, the existing methods have low prediction accuracy or require a lot of calculation in case of large deformations. In this paper, an iterative method for parametric modeling, automatic generation of finite element model, and hot-to-cold analysis of an H-shaped hollow fan blade are proposed. The accuracy and efficiency of the traditional uncoupling (UCM) and weak coupling methods (WCS), as well as the proposed strong–weak coupling method (SWCS), are compared with the strong coupling method (SCU) as a reference. Results show that improvements in the prediction accuracy can be made by the SWCS method, and the error of the maximum blade deformation is 2.3%, while the error of the UCM method and WCS method is 30% and 12%, respectively. An excellent agreement can be observed between the SWCS and SCU methods in the whole blade height with errors of 2%~5%, and the calculation time of the SWCS method is only 2.5% of the SCU method, which is reduced from 7200 min to 180 min, making it possible to conduct the hot-to-cold analysis at the design stage.