Random Vibration Analysis for Impellers of Centrifugal Compressors Through the Pseudo-Excitation Method

Impellers of centrifugal compressors are generally loaded by fluctuating aerodynamic pressure in operations. Excessive vibration of the impellers can be induced by unsteady airflows and lead to severe fatigue failures. Traditional transient stress analyses implemented in time domain generally require multiple load-step, very time-consuming computations using input of temporal pneumatic force previously obtained from Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analyses. For quick evaluation of structural integrity of impellers, it is necessary to develop random vibration models and solution approaches defined in frequency domain. In this paper, the Pseudo-Excitation Method (PEM) is used to obtain power spectral density of three-dimensional, dynamic displacement and stress of impellers. A finite element model of an unshrouded impeller of a centrifugal compressor is generated based on the result of unsteady CFD analysis. Compared with the direct transient stress analyses in time domain, the pseudo-excitation method provides accurate and fast estimation of dynamic response of the impeller, making it an applicable and efficient method for analyzing random vibration of impellers.