Modeling Bladed Disks: Challenges and Opportunities in Accuracy and Efficiency

Geometric Complexity: Blidsk geometries are inherently complex, featuring intricate blade shapes, variable thickness profiles, and intricate cooling channels. Capturing these details in a model requires sophisticated meshing techniques and can significantly impact computational cost. Material Behavior: Bladed disks experience a wide range of loading conditions, including thermal gradients, centrifugal forces, and vibrations. Accurately representing the material's response, including non-linear behavior, creep, and fatigue damage accumulation, is crucial for predicting real-world performance. Fluid-Structure Interaction (FSI): In many applications, the interaction between the blades and the working fluid (air or gas) significantly affects disk behavior. Modeling this interaction requires coupling Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) tools with structural analysis software, adding complexity and computational expense.