Rotor to stator contacts in turbomachines. Review and application

• Contact effects between fixed and rotating parts in turbomachines are important.
• Rotor/stator and blade/casing cases both considered.
• Review regarding numerical models and experimental test benches.
• Illustration of the interactions between the global dynamics and local phenomena.
• Physical interpretations privileged.

The safety of turbomachines requires controlling the risks caused by contacts occurring between fixed and rotating parts. Undesirable phenomena induced by bladed wheel/casing interactions are caused by the forced excitation of the natural modes of a blade leading to its damage or by potentially dangerous couplings between the modes of the casing and those of the wheel. Rotor–stator contacts may also lead to various types of dangerous behavior, including the well known configurations of dry whirl and dry whip. The paper proposes a large-scale literature review and examines existing numerical models and experimental setups used for highlighting the phenomenology involved in different rotor to stator contacts configurations. It confirms the great complexity of the problems which, by nature, are considerably nonlinear and involve multiphysics and multiscale coupled behaviors.