Aero Propulsion and Power Technology

High Cycle Fatigue is of vital concern for gas turbine engines. Blade to blade variations, caused either in the manufacturing process or through engine operation, lead to mistuning and other variations in forced response. Mistuning can increase theresonant response by up to 400%.Although, the contribution of mistuning to high cycle fatigue has been well documented, there currently exists no automated way in which to measure the blade to blade variations of high response rotors. The purpose of this SBIR is to create an automatedmeasurement device capable of measuring the blade to blade variations in a highly accurate and automated fashion. Phase I will show the feasibility of combining a standard computer numerically controlled milling machine with a standard laser scanningdevice in order to create a highly accurate, automated, digital reproduction of the physical blisk. The digital blisk can then be used for finite element analysis and for probabilistic HCF design, which directly supports the ENSIP requirement of a 1x10E-7failure rate. Future phases will complete the design of an automated, blisk-specific, computer numerically controlled laser scanning machine dedicated to the rapid digital reproduction of blisks. Future phases will also provide software tools forreporting blisk variations. The technology is dual use in nature in that it will be applicable to to both civilian and military aircraft. This is true in terms of quality control at initial manufacture, probabilistic design and as a field inspection tool. The proposed capabilitywill enable digital dimensional models of any complex structure to be rapidly generated and subsequently analysed by finite element analysis. Additionally, the medical, dental and automotive industries would use the capability for precision measurementactivities or investigations and/or reverse engineering programs.