Study on the cantilever grinding process of aero-engine blade

Abstract

An aero-engine blade is the typical thin-walled workpiece with low rigidity. The machining accuracy of the aero-engine blade with sculptured surfaces has been a research focus in the aviation industry. This article presents a new cantilever grinding process for the high precision machining of aero-engine blade. Only one end of a blade is fixed and the other end is free in order to eliminate the deformation of blade caused by over-positioning. Moreover, the vibration of aero-engine blade can be reduced so that the surface quality of blade can be improved in the grinding. The grinding parameters are optimized for the low deflections of blade. The types of tool path are also discussed in this article. Finally, the computer numerical control machining examples are implemented. The measurement results show that the profile errors of suction/pressure surface machined by the proposed process do not exceed 0.02 mm. And the machining accuracy of leading/trailing edge with a radius of about 0.05 mm is acceptable.