Advanced turbofan blade refurbishment technique
- Flow Application Research and Sermatech International Inc., Fremont, CA (United States)
The purpose of the work reported here is to investigate whether the lessons learned from the work of Suder et al. can be used to reduce the in-service performance deterioration of a fan on a high bypass ratio turbofan engine. To this end, a back-to-back test was done on the fan of an RB211-22B engine with the cooperation of Delta Airlines. The fan and engine were first overhauled per normal airline practice and cell-tested to establish that the engine performance met flight acceptance standards. This test, which the engine passed, also established a performance baseline for the overhauled engine. At this point the fan blade leading edge had not been filed or scraped and the blade surfaces had not been polished because the leading edge damage and blade surface roughness fell within the acceptable limits specified by the manufacturer for normal overhaul practice. After the cell test, the fan was removed from the engine and sent to Sermatech International where the following additional operations were performed: (1) the blade surfaces were polished to a finish of 20 rms {micro}in; (2) leading edge roughness due to particle impact damage was removed and the leading edge was polished to a finish of 20 rms {micro}in; (3) the leading edge shape was rounded and the leading edge thickness was reduced over the first 5--10% of chord. Test results indicated a 0.7% drop in thrust specific fuel consumption (lb fuel/lb thrust/hr) relative to the baseline engine after the enhanced fan overhaul. Based on the results of Suder et al. (1995) it appears that 70--80% of this performance gain is due to the thin smooth leading edge and the remainder to the highly polished finish of the blade.
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- OSTI ID:
- 136527
- Journal Information:
- Journal of Turbomachinery, Journal Name: Journal of Turbomachinery Journal Issue: 4 Vol. 117; ISSN JOTUEI; ISSN 0889-504X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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