Improving fatigue life of gas turbine fan blade using advanced composite materials

The application of fiber reinforced composites in gas turbine engines for aircraft helps to increase fatigue life, and also provides the high stiffness, low weight and high strength. In the emerging technology, gas turbine engine performance has been keeps on improving day by day to achieve better in the market between the competitors. Based on all the needs aviation engine plans to reduce the weight of the components wherever it is possible by changing the material selection and design process. Composite material is one of the key materials using in most of aircraft structural components and parts now a days. Here we considered the fan blade of turbofan engine and replaced existing materials with composite material. The objective is to find and improve the fatigue life of gas turbine engine mechanical system components by using advanced composite materials in place of existing materials. Fatigue analysis will be done in commercial finite element packages, based on the results margin and life of the fan blade is calculated. (paper)