Reverse engineering of turbine blades based on design intent

The purpose of this paper is to describe a new approach to process the data points measured from turbine blade airfoils in order to make a valid shape via reverse engineering method. Currently, preliminary B-rep models can be created by fitting surfaces to point clouds using a 3D laser scanner. In case of a turbine blade, due to high shape complexity, the resulting model is often unsuitable in practice.

A small change in blade geometry can lead to a large change in turbine performance. Therefore, control of the blade shape is critical to the design process. Authors believe that the only way to capture the valid shape of a blade airfoil out of the many manufacturing deviations is to incorporate design key-points during reverse engineering.

Implementation of the new method using segmentation and constrained fitting algorithm (SCFA) on a heavy-duty industrial gas turbine blade has been reported and discussed.