Containment of soft wall casing wrapped with Kevlar fabric

Aramid fabrics have been commonly used in the civil turbofan engine fan blade containment system for its excellent performance. To investigate the behavior and capability of soft wall containment casing, a series of fan blade released tests were conducted on the high-speed spin tester. The soft wall casing was fabricated by wrapping multiple layers of Kevlar49 plain woven fabric around a thin steel ring. Casings with different inner metal ring and outer fabric layers number were compared. The method of using the explicit dynamic software LS-DYNA to establish the finite element analysis model for the quantitative analysis of the containment process was developed and conducted. The simulation results are in good agreement with the test results. It is shown that the containment process of the soft wall casing can be divided into three impact stages. The casing with low-stiffness inner metal ring will get severe overall deformation and lose the structural integrity when it suffers the blade impact. Kevlar fabric layers will appear large bulge on outside surface and absorb the most impact dynamic energy of the high speed released fan blade. By summing up the results of the test and simulation, an empirical critical equation was derived to describe the relationship between the released blade dynamic energy and the Kevlar fabric thickness. (C) 2019 Chinese Society of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Production and hosting by Elsevier Ltd.