Investigation of high-speed abrasion behavior of an abradable seal rubber in aero-engine fan application

Abradable seal rubber has been widely used in aero-engine fans to improve their efficiency by reducing the clearance between rotating and stationary components. To investigate the high-speed scraping behavior between a vulcanized silicone rubber and a Ti-6Al-4V fan blade and evaluate the abradable performance of seal rubber, abrasion tests were conducted at a blade tip velocity of 50–300 m/s with an incursion rate of 100 μm/s. The influences of the blade tip velocity on the wear mechanism and interaction forces were specially analyzed. It is shown that abrasive wear and pattern wear are the predominant wear mechanisms, and pattern wear can be seen as the emergence and propagation of cracks. With an increase of the blade tip velocity, both of the final incursion depth and wear mass loss of seal rubber exhibit growth trends. The gradual changes of rubbing forces with an increase of rubbing time are the characteristic of abrasive wear, and force curves with unstable mutations are a reflection of pattern wear. At a constant incursion rate of 100 μm/s, the maximum values of interaction forces decrease first and then grow with an increase of the blade tip velocity, and the blade tip velocity of 150 m/s becomes the cut-off point between abrasive wear and pattern wear.