Journal Pre-proofs

Cracking analysis of an aero-engine combustor

Junhong Zhang, Huwei Dai, Jiewei Lin, Yi Yuan, Zhiyuan Liu, Yubo Sun,
Kunying Ding

PII: S1350-6307(18)31033-1
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.engfailanal.2020.104640
Reference: EFA 104640

To appear in: Engineering Failure Analysis

Received Date: 21 August 2018

Revised Date: 27 May 2020
Accepted Date: 27 May 2020

Please cite this article as: Zhang, J., Dai, H., Lin, J., Yuan, Y., Liu, Z., Sun, Y., Ding, K., Cracking analysis of an
aero-engine combustor, Engineering Failure Analysis (2020), doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.engfailanal.
2020.104640

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 Cracking analysis of an aero-engine combustor
Junhong Zhang 1,2, Huwei Dai 1, Jiewei Lin 1, Yi Yuan 1, Zhiyuan Liu 1, Yubo Sun 3,

Kunying Ding 3

(1. State Key Laboratory of Engine, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300354, China;

2. Mechanical Engineering Department of Tianjin University Ren’Ai College, Tianjin 301636

China

3. Tianjin Key Laboratory for Civil Aircraft Airworthiness and Maintenance，Civil Aviation

University of China， Tianjin 300300, China)

Abstract: Failure analysis on an aero-engine combustor is carried out for the cranking failure of

combustor liner during its service period. Crack macroscopic observation and microscopic

observation are performed. Fluid-structure coupling simulation of aero-engine combustor under

typical working conditions is carried out to obtain the temperature distribution of combustor using

a CFD commercial code, ANASYS FLUENT. Based on the results of fluid-structure coupling

simulation, nonlinear statics analysis of the aero-engine combustor liner is carried out using a

commercial code, MSC/Nastran. The visual inspection results show that obvious fatigue

characteristics are found at fractures, and fatigue is responsible for observed cracks. The simulation

results show that the maximum plastic strain of the combustor is located at the edge of the mixing

holes near the two cracks. The maximum plastic strain is 0.4476%, 0.4154% respectively. During

aero-engine’s service period, the start and stop of engine would cause cyclic loading of plastic strain,

which give rise to fatigue damage and fatigue damage leads to cracking of combustor.

Key Words：Aero-engine combustor; Failure analysis; Fatigue crack; Fluid-structure coupling

CFD; Finite element analysis

1. Introduction

Combustor is an important hot end component of aero-engine, of which the strength and

reliability have a direct impact on the operation safety of the aircraft. The combustor works under

high temperature, high stress and high corrosion loads, which leads to various failure modes due to

different causes.
 Numerous works on areo-engine combustor failure analysis have been done by many

researchers. Naraparaju et al [1] performed a damage assessment of an aero-engine combustor

thermal barrier coating (TBC) after service in sand attack areas. They conducted examined phase

formations and microstructural changes of samples through scanning electron microscopy (SEM)

and X-ray diffractometry (XRD), results show that the CMAS damage is the main damage pattern

of the combustor TBC. Tao et al [2] adopted metallographic analysis, mechanical calculation to

determine the causes for the explosion of a combustion chamber shell, results show that the poor

quality of the roll welding seam is the fundamental cause of failure added to which a crack in the

seam had not been discovered during a second overhaul. Lv et al [3] performed macroscopic and

microscopic observations, microstructure investigation, chemical analysis and hardness

measurement to investigate the failure causes of notches and cracks in a combustor liner. Results

show that the failure modes of notches, axial-direction crack and welding spot crack are respectively

attributed to high-temperature ablation, mixed crack of ablation and thermal fatigue, and thermal

fatigue crack. Chen et al [4] conducted thermal exposure experiments to examine the thermal effect

on microstructural degradation and speculate service temperature of the combustor liner, results

show that coating microstructure degradations and intergranular oxidation are the main reasons for

initiation of the thermal fatigue cracks at the hole-edge of the combustor liner. Remarkably, the

failure analysis of the combustor is mostly from material detection point of view. It is helpful in

determining combustor failure mode, but it is difficult to quantify the impact of the service load. In

recently years, many researchers have carried out simulation studies on aero-engine combustor.

However, these researches are more focus on combustion mechanism [5-7], fluid flow and heat

transfer characteristics [8-10], rarely with combustor liner static characteristics and failure mechanism.

The main objective of this work is to analysis the failure mechanism of the combustor and

explain the reason for combustor failure. Crack macroscopic observation and microscopic

observation are performed to analysis the failure mechanism of the combustor. Fluid-structure

coupling simulation is employed to establish the relationship between the temperature distribution

and the structural stress /strain distribution, by which the reason for combustor failure is interpreted.

The research result is crucial for assessing the loading conditions during the service period of aero

engine combustor, which has great engineering significance for the design and modification of the
aero engine combustor.

2 Visual inspection

2.1 Crack macroscopic observation

As shown in Fig. 1, an annular combustor of the civil aero engine with 20 swirlers is studied

in this paper. The axial length of the combustor is about 185mm, the maximum radius of the

combustor outer liner is about 330mm, and the minimum radius of the combustor inner liner is about

235 mm. The combustor liner can be seen as a cyclic symmetric structure in pairs of swirler. As

shown in Fig. 2, the combustor liner can be orderly divided into three zones from the combustor

head to the combustor outlet, which are combustor head, primary combustion zone, complementary

combustion zone. There are 80 primary holes and 4 cooling gas films with totally 4800 gas film

cooling holes in the primary combustion zone. There are 120 mixing holes and 5 cooling gas films

with totally 5600 gas film cooling holes in the complementary combustion zone.

Fig.1 Combustor studied in this paper

Fig.2 Schematic diagram of the combustor

 During service, long cracks were found near the mixing holes and the locations are given in

Fig. 3. Besides the two cracks shown in Fig. 3, several cracks are also found at the same positions

of other pairs of swirler with similar crack path.

Fig. 3 Cracks found in combustor liner

Crack 1 initiates from the bottom of the mixing hole, propagates along the axial direction to

the combustor outer liner skirt edge and finally penetrates the combustor outer liner. A slight

ablation spot can be found on the crack near the skirt. The source of Crack 2 locates on the lower

right of the mixing hole, the crack zigzags to the combustor liner skirt edge along the axial direction

and penetrates the combustor outer liner. For Crack 2, no other obvious damage is observed around

the crack.

2.2 Crack microscopic observation

The microscopic appearance of fracture is observed by FEI Quanta FEG 250 field emission

scanning electron microscope. As shown in Fig. 4(a), no obvious structural defects are observed in

the fracture surface. The crack source is close to the mixing hole. Fatigue striations are found

perpendicular to the crack propagation direction. Some secondary cracks are also found in the crack

propagation zone. Different from normal cracks with rough fracture surface, a relatively smooth

fracture surface due to ablation can be found in the specimen. For Crack 2, the character of the

fracture surface is quite similar to Crack 1. No obvious defects are found, typical fatigue striations

are show in the crack propagation, as shown in Fig. 4(b).

 (a) Microscopic appearance of crack 1 fracture

(b) Microscopic appearance of crack 2 fracture

Fig. 4 Microscopic appearance of 2 cracks

3 Fluid-structure coupling simulation

3.1 Geometry and meshes

The 3D model of the combustor is develop using the ROMER laser non-contact three

coordinate scanner (HEXAGON, Sweden), as shown in Fig. 5.

 (a). Combustor point cloud data (b). Combustor geometry model

Fig. 5 Geometry model of the combustor.

For the fluid region of the fluid-structure coupled model, a 1/10 sector of the annular combustor

is used to construct the calculation domain due to the cyclic symmetricity in order to reduce the

computational cost. Tetrahedral elements are employed to mesh the area within 3 mm away from

the combustor wall surface. The basic size of the tetrahedral mesh is 0.5 mm and the mesh size

growth rate is less than 20%. Hexahedral elements are used for the region farther than 3 mm away

from the combustor wall surface. The basic size of the hexahedral mesh is 1 mm. The tetrahedral

and the hexahedral meshes are connected through pyramid meshes. In order to stabilize the airflow

and benefit the convergence, the inlet and outlet passages of 40 mm in length are added in the model

to minimize the effect of pressure reflection on the flow field.

For the structural region, the combustor matrix is a thin-wall structure with thickness less than

2 mm, whose shape has great influence on the flow field. Tetrahedron elements with second order

precision are employed for the combustor matrix with basic mesh size of 1mm. The meshes around

the film cooling holes and the mixing holes are refined locally with smaller size of 0.3 mm. The

thermal barrier coating (TBC) with 0.2 mm in thickness is sprayed on the inner surface of the

combustor, which can reduce the working temperature of the combustor matrix [11]. In this research,

the influence of the TBC on the heat transfer between the hot gas and the cold combustor matrix is

considered, which is meshed using tetrahedron elements.

After the verification of the meshing consistence, 7 180 917 fluid elements and 2 305 363 solid

elements are used for the entire model, as shown in Fig. 6.

 (a). Fluid model

(b). Structure model

Fig. 6 Fluid-structure coupling model.

3.2 Fluid-structure coupling modeling

The turbulent combustion processes under typical operating conditions are simulated by

FLUENT. Conjugate heat transfer boundary condition is set for the interface between the fluid

domain and the structure domain. A coupling surface is established on the interface to make the heat

flow and the temperature between the two domains equal. To describe the turbulent flow in the

combustor, Navier-Stokes equation with realizable k-epsilon model is adopted. The P1 radiation

model is employed to simulate the radiation heat transfer in the combustor. The pressure-swirl-

atomizer model is used for the fuel injection process. The two-phase flow calculation is carried out

by using the stochastic trajectory model. The motion and transport of discrete droplets in the flow

field are tracked by Lagrange method. The conservation of gas phase is described by Euler method,

and the influence of droplet on gas phase is considered by adding corresponding source term in the

conservation equation of gas phase. PDF non-premixed combustion model is applied to simulate

the turbulent diffusion combustion. The influence of combustion on the flow field is considered by

adding the corresponding source term in the conservation of energy. The pressure and velocity terms

are coupled by SIMPLE arithmetic in the calculation.

3.3 Operating conditions

Based on the quick access recorder (QAR) data of the aircraft, the aero-engine working cycle

is simplified into five typical working conditions: idle, maximum, climbing, cruising and descent.

The corresponding operating parameters of the aero-engine are shown in Table 1.

Table 1 Operating parameters of the aero-engine in typical working conditions.

Intake pressure Intake temperature Fuel injection flow rate

working condition
(PSI) (℃) (kg/s)

Idle state 66.98 202.89 0.0142

Maximum state 423.21 534.71 0.0529

Climbing state 337.68 507.18 0.0403

Cruising state 346.18 486.51 0.0256

Descent state 281.55 441.43 0.0191

3.4 Boundary conditions

Pressure inlet and pressure outlet boundaries are adopted for the inlet and the outlet of the flow

field. No-slip boundary is used for the combustor wall surface. The dissipation rates of turbulent

kinetic energy k and turbulent kinetic energy ε of the near-wall area are determined through the wall

function method. Periodic boundary conditions are applied on the two sides of the sector with

periodic rotation angle of 36°.

3.5 Model verification

During the service, the TBC undergoes varying degrees of phase transition at different

operating temperatures, so the macroscopic appearance of the TBC depends on the thermal loads.

In order to verify the fluid-structure coupling model, the calculated surface temperature distribution

of the TBC is compared with the macroscopic appearance of the TBC in the same load case.

Although the calculated surface temperature of the TBC varies according to working conditions, the

pattern of the temperature distribution is similar. So the TBC surface temperature under the

maximum condition is employed for the comparison, as shown in Fig. 7. In Fig. 7(a), from the

simulation result around the mixing hole, it is found the upstream temperature is lower than that of

the downstream, and a convex area of high temperature locates right below the mixing hole. In terms
of the actual combustor, a fall-off area of the TBC is found at the same region exactly in the same

shape as the calculated temperature distribution. In Fig. 7(b), a concave high temperature area is

found between two mixing holes at the downstream region, and a damage of TBC also appears on

the actual combustor on the same location in the same shape. The fall-off of the TBC is mainly

because of the over-high temperature during the service and the followed high thermal stress

between the layers inside TBC. Basically, the above comparison validates the reasonability and the

accuracy of the developed simulation model, which is the foundation of the following analysis.

(a). Reversed C-shape dividing lines

(b). Reversed ω-shape dividing line

Fig. 7 Comparison between simulation results and the actual combustor TBC.

4 Stress analysis of aero-engine combustor

4.1 Material properties of combustor matrix

Tensile test of the matrix material, Hastelloy X, is carried out to obtain the material properties

as shown in Fig. 8. The specimen with round cross section is designed according to ISO 6892-

1:2016 and ISO 6892-2:2018. The machined surface of the specimen is polished. The experiments

are carried out on MTS high temperature test system under 0℃, 300℃, 600℃ and 900℃. Test at

each temperature level is repeated for three times. The testing strain rate is controlled as 1 mm/min.

The axial deformation of the specimen is measured by extensometer at the sampling rate of 10

samples per second.

 Fig. 8 Tensile test

From the experiment, the corrected stress-strain curve of Hastelloy X at different temperatures

is obtained using Eqs. (1) and (2).

 =s (1+e) (1)

 =ln(1+e) (2)

where σ is the actual stress, ε is the actual strain, s is the recorded engineering stress, and e is the

engineering strain.

The corrected σ-  curves of Hastelloy X under different temperatures are shown in Fig. 9.

The elastic-plastic stress-strain relationship that follows Ramberg-Osgood relationship is fitted by

nonlinear least square method, which are given in Eq. (3).

  1
= ( ) 0.50072
269602 2188
  1
= ( ) 0.48325
142472 1719.87
(3)
  1
= ( ) 0.46211
96011 1547.14
  1
= ( ) 0.05838
54028 374.63
 Fig. 9 σ-  curve of Hastelloy X

4.2 Nonlinear static analysis

The thermal stress of the combustor is caused by the mismatch of local thermal extension due

to the inhomogeneous temperature distribution under the impact of cold and hot air flow. The

temperature of combustor calculated by the fluid-structure coupling is taken as the thermal load in

the nonlinear static analysis. Based on the test results, the material properties of Hastelloy X at

different temperatures are obtained by Lagrange interpolation. The two end surfaces of the

combustor sector are constrained in the axial direction, and the two periodic symmetric surfaces

are constrained in the circumferential direction. The nonlinear static analysis is carried out using

SOL400 in MSC.Nastran.

5 Result and discussion

The temperature distributions of the combustor matrix under different working conditions are

shown in Fig. 10. The primary combustion area is for fuel atomization, evaporation and partial

combustion, while the complementary combustion area is for fuel completed combustion. For this

reason, the temperature of the combustor matrix in the complementary combustion zone is much

higher than that of the primary combustion zone. The global temperature of the combustor inner

liner is higher than that of the outer liner. The fuel mass flow rate varies according to the operating

conditions, which can be ranked in ascending order as: idle state, descent state, cruising state,
climbing state, and maximum state. With increasing fuel mass flow rate, the fuel combustion heat

release increases, and the global temperature and the maximum temperature of the combustor matrix

increases as well. The maximum temperature of the combustor matrix under idle state, maximum

state, climbing state, cruising state, descent state is 804.38 ℃, 1114.27 ℃, 1056.93 ℃, 963.76 ℃,

874.05 ℃, respectively. At idle state, climbing state, cruising state, descent state, the maximum

temperature appears at the combustor inner liner floating tile near the combustor outlet; at maximum

state, the maximum temperature appears at the downstream region of the combustor inner liner

mixing holes, as shown in Fig. 10.

(a). Idle state (b). Maximum state

(c). Climbing state (d). Cruising state

(e). Descent state

Fig.10 Temperature distribution of the combustor matrix
 The plastic strain distributions under different loading conditions are shown in Fig. 11.

Apparently, the global strain of the combustor increases with increasing of working temperature.

In each case, the strain concentration appears mainly in the downstream area of the primary holes

and mixing holes. The maximum plastic strains of combustor matrix under idle state, maximum

state, climbing state, cruising state, descent state are 0.2815%, 0.4476%, 0.4154%, 0.3556%,

0.3207%, respectively.

(a). Idle state

(b). Maximum state

(c). Climbing state

 (d). Cruising state

(e). Descent state

Fig. 11 Nonlinear static analysis result

In the case of climbing, the plastic strain distribution is in good agreement with that of Crack

1. The corresponding temperature distribution is shown in Fig. 12. Temperature near the mixing

hole is high due to the hot gas radiation. Meanwhile, the mixing air enters the combustor as

cooling flow so as to form a low temperature zone in the downstream region of mixing hole. It is

the reason that the temperature distribution is not even in this area that leads to large thermal stress

and strain accordingly. In this case, fatigue damage is inevitable due to the cyclic plastic strain and

the accumulated damage causes crack initiation in this area.

 Fig.12 Schematic diagram of temperature distribution in crack 1 area

In the case of maximum, the distribution of the plastic strain correlates to Crack 2, and the

temperature distribution is shown in Fig. 13. Due to the same reason, a strain concentration is

performed below the mixing hole, which may result in crack sources in this area.

Fig.13 Schematic diagram of temperature distribution in crack 2 area

6 Conclusions

1) Visual inspection shows obvious fatigue characteristics at the fracture surface, so the fatigue

crack initiation and propagation are the main reason for the failure of the combustor.

2) Nonlinear static analysis results show that the maximum plastic strain of the combustor

matrix positively relates to the loading temperature. The biggest strain is 0.4476% under the

maximum operation case.

3) The plastic strain distributions under the climbing and maximum cases are consistent with the

locations of the two cracks on the combustor. So the fatigue process due to the cyclic load

may be responsible for the failure.

Acknowledge

This work is supported by Civil Aviation Administration of China (No.: MRHD20160106).

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 Highlights

• Fatigue is responsible for the cracking of the aero-engine combustor

• Service temperature and plastic strain of combustor are obtained by CFD and FEA
• Plastic strain caused by non-uniform distributed temperature is the main reason of fatigue crack
• Formation mechanism of non-uniform distributed temperature in combustor is clarified
 Declaration of interests

☒ The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal

relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

☐The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may
be considered as potential competing interests: