Geometric design of friction ring dampers in blisks using nonlinear modal analysis and Kriging surrogate model

Integrally bladed disks (blisk) have been widely used in the turbo-machinery industry due to its high aerodynamic performance and structural efficiency. A friction ring damper is usually integrated in the system to improve its low damping. However, the design of the geometry of this friction ring damper become complex and computationally expensive due to the strong nonlinearities from friction interfaces. In this work, we propose an efficient modelling strategy based on advanced nonlinear modal analysis and Kriging surrogate models to design and optimize the geometry of a 3D friction ring damper attached to a high fidelity full-scale blisk. The 3D ring damper is parametrised with a few key geometrical parameters. The impact of each geometric parameter and their sensitivities to nonlinear dynamic response can be efficiently assessed using Kriging meta-modelling based on a few damped nonlinear normal modes. Results demonstrate that the damping performances of ring dampers can be substantially optimized through the proposed modelling strategy while key insights for the design of the ring are given. It is also demonstrated that the distribution of the contact normal load on the contact surface has a strong influence on the damping performances and can be effectively tuned via the upper surface geometry of the damper.