Team Members & Role:

• Meghan Davis – Team Lead
• Luke Lombardo– Design Lead
• James Miller– Analysis Lead
• Justin Rife – Fabrication Lead
• Jonathan Lawrence– Evaluation Lead

Abstract:
Pratt & Whitney (P&W), a United Technologies Corporation Company, is a global leader in the design and manufacture of gas turbine engines for aircrafts that regards reliability, integrity, and safety as critical concerns for any engine throughout the development, testing, and production phases. For a jet engine specifically, the high cycle fatigue (HCF) testing procedures for airfoils present areas of concern. HCF testing measures the fatigue life of a specimen’s material or geometry over a series of times by applying different amounts of force. The goal is to determine the number of cycles it takes until there is a fracture in the specimen at a targeted stress. Current industry airfoil testing consists of models and experimental data that lack high accuracy while also being cost and time effective. While working in close collaboration with the Mechanical Team, our team was asked to validate the functionality and performance of the previous HCF Rig and control system for Pratt & Whitney while evolving the design to be production-ready, validated, and user-friendly. This evolved controller design will be able to maintain a target frequency and stress on a specimen for the duration of a 108-cycle test with extreme repeatability and accuracy. This accuracy and repeatability are possible with high-quality, industrial-grade components.