Estimating the effect of Manufacturing Variability on Turbine Blade Life

Thakur, Nikita, Keane, A.J. and Nair, P.B. (2010) Estimating the effect of Manufacturing Variability on Turbine Blade Life. 4th International Workshop on Reliable Engineering Computing (REC2010), Singapore, Singapore. 03 - 05 Mar 2010. 12 pp . (doi:10.3850/978-981-08-5118-7 030).

Abstract

The life of turbine blades is central to the integrity of an aircraft engine. Turbine blades, when
manufactured, inevitably exhibit some deviations in shape from the desired design specifications due to the
influence of manufacturing variability.

This manufacturing variability may in turn lead to variations in the expected life and performance of these blades.

It becomes important therefore to understand and model the
effect of manufacturing variability on turbine blade life. The present work proposes a methodology which
employs an existing geometry manipulation technique, namely Free Form Deformation (FFD), to generate
3-d models of the probable manufactured blade shapes. FFD is employed in conjunction with optimization
for morphing the base geometry to generate different probable manufactured blade shapes in a case where a
limited number of measurements are available per blade to characterize these differences.

Lifing estimations on these perturbed geometries show that the presence of variability due to manufacturing processes may result in a reduction of around 1.6% in mean life relative to the designed life, and, a maximum relative
reduction of around 3.6%, for turbine blades manufactured over a span of one year.

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Contributors

Author: A.J. Keane

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