A method for parametric analysis of stability boundaries for nonlinear periodic vibrations of structures with contact interfaces

A method for parametric analysis of the stability loss boundary has been developed for periodic regimes of nonlinear forced vibrations for a first time. The method allows parametric frequency-domain calculations of the stability loss together with the vibration amplitudes and design parameter values corresponding to the stability boundaries. The tracing algorithm is applied to obtain the trajectories of stability loss points as functions of design parameters. The parametric stability loss is formulated for cases when: (i) the design parameters characterise the properties of nonlinear contact interfaces (e.g. gap, contact stiffness, friction coefficient, etc.) and (ii) the design parameters describe linear components of the analysed structure (e.g. parameters of geometric shape, material, natural frequencies, modal damping etc.) and (iii) these parameters describe the excitation loads (e.g. their level, distribution or frequency). An approach allowing the multiparametric analysis of stability boundaries is proposed. The method uses the multiharmonic representation of the periodic forced response and aimed at the analysis of realistic gas-turbine structures comprising thousands and millions degrees of freedom. The method can be used for the effective search of isolated branches of the nonlinear solutions and examples of detection and search of the isolated branches are given: for relatively small and for large-scale finite element models. The efficiency of the method for calculation of the stability boundaries and for the search of isolated branches is demonstrated on simple systems and on a large-scale model of a turbine blade.