Smart Coordinate Measuring Machine (CMM) Inspection for Turbine Guide Vanes with Trend Line and Geometric Profile Tolerance

Abstract

Turbine guide vanes are among the most critical and complex turbine parts. As an entire engine comprises a significant number of vanes, simplification of the measurement process translates into overall time and money savings. The key to simplification is to define critical areas for inspection, which enables relaxation of strict inspection standards in all areas of stable process manufacturing. The method described herein can help engineers to achieve savings in inspection time and cost, at the same time ensuring the correct shape of vanes as the approach used in this work places great emphasis on correlations between measurements, working conditions, and manufacturing abilities. Another element of the novelty of this approach is an atypical hybrid convention for the crossing of vertical and horizontal inspection paths, assuring a correlation between the measured sections. Although this novel approach was used to measure the geometry of a cast turbine guide vane, it can be easily implemented to measure the geometry of any other element of complex shape.