Robust design of turbine blades against manufacturing variability Online publication date: Tue, 31-Mar-2015
by Nikita Thakur, A.J. Keane, P.B. Nair
International Journal of Reliability and Safety (IJRS), Vol. 5, No. 3/4, 2011
Abstract: Turbine blade life is central to the integrity of the aircraft engine. Manufacturing variability may lead to variations in the expected life and performance of turbine blades. It becomes important therefore to understand these variations and seek new designs that are robust to manufacturing variability. The present work proposes a methodology that employs Free Form Deformation in conjunction with optimisation to generate realistic 3D representations of the manufactured blades using limited measurements available per blade. Lifing estimations on the perturbed geometries show a reduction of around 1.7% in mean life relative to the designed life with a maximum relative reduction of around 3.7%. Following this, the proposed methodology is employed for robust design studies resulting in a better turbine blade design. This design indicates an improvement of around 2% in the designed life, around 3% improvement in mean life and approximately 57% reduction in blade life variability as compared to the current turbine blade design.
Existing subscribers:
Go to Inderscience Online Journals to access the Full Text of this article.
If you are not a subscriber and you just want to read the full contents of this article, buy online access here.Complimentary Subscribers, Editors or Members of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Reliability and Safety (IJRS):
Login with your Inderscience username and password:
Want to subscribe?
A subscription gives you complete access to all articles in the current issue, as well as to all articles in the previous three years (where applicable). See our Orders page to subscribe.
If you still need assistance, please email subs@inderscience.com
Our Blog 
Follow us on Twitter 
Visit us on Facebook