Containment ability and groove depth design of U type protection ring

High-energy rotor uncontained failure can cause catastrophic damage effects to aircraft systems if not addressed in design. In this paper, numerical simulations of three high-energy rotor disk fragments impacting on U type protection rings are carried out using LS-DYNA. Protection rings with the same mass and different groove depths are designed to study the influence of the groove depth. Simulation results including kinetic energy and impact force variation of single fragment are presented. It shows that the groove depth infects both the axial containment ability of the protection ring and the transfer process of energy. The depth of groove ought to be controlled to an appropriate value to meet both the requirement of axial containment and higher safety factor. Verification test on high-speed spin tester has been conducted and shows that protection ring with appropriate U structure can resist the impact of the disk burst fragments. The ring is inflated from a circular to an oval-triangle shape. The corresponding simulation shows good agreement with the test.