Effect of blade geometry on the powder spreading process in additive manufacturing

In powder-bed-based additive manufacturing,the quality of the powder bed is closely related to the geometry of the blade used during the powder spreading process.In this study,the spreading process with the vertical blade,inclined blade,and round blade with different radii was performed by discrete element method to investigate the effects of blade geometry on powder spreading.The results show that at the same spreading parameters,the round blade caused the highest density than inclined blade and vertical blade.Increasing the round blade radius can improve the packing density of the powder bed,but it has little effect on the uniformity.The increase in packing density is related to the transitional smoothness of the blade surface at the entrance of the powder bed.The smoother the shape transition of the blade surface at the powder bed entrance,the powders enter the powder bed more gently,so more powders enter the powder bed,resulting in higher packing density.The results may provide suggestions for improving the laser melting process.

Effect of blade tip geometry on tip leakage vortex dynamics and cavitation pattern in axial-flow pump

A series of blade tip geometries, including original plain tip, rounded tip on the pressure side and diverging tip towards the suction side, were adopted to investigate the effect of blade geometry on tip leakage vortex dynamics and cavitation pattern in an axial-flow pump. On the basis of the computation, it clearly shows the flow structure in the clearance for different tip configurations by the detailed data of axial velocity and turbulent kinetic energy. The in-plain trajectory, in aspects of the angle between the blade suction side and vortex core and the initial point of tip leakage vortex, was presented using the maximum swirling strength method. The most striking feature is that the inception location of tip leakage vortex is delayed for chamfered tip due to the change of blade loading on suction side. Some significant non-dimensional parameters, such as pressure, swirling strength and turbulent kinetic energy, were used to depict the characteristics of tip vortex core. By the distribution of circumferential vorticity which dominates the vortical flows near the tip region, it is observed that the endwall detachment as the leakage flow meets the mainstream varies considerably for tested cases. The present study also indicates that the shear layer feeds the turbulence into tip leakage vortex core, but the way is different. For the chamfered tip, high turbulence level in vortex core is mainly from the tip clearance where large turbulent kinetic energy emerges, while it is almost from a layer extending from the suction side corner for rounded tip. At last, the visualized observations show that tip clearance cavitation is eliminated dramatically for rounded tip but more intensive for chamfered tip, which can be associated with the vortex structure in the clearance.

An investigation on adaptively machining the leading and tailing edges of an SPF/DB titanium hollow blade using free-form deformation

Titanium hollow blades are characterized with lightweight and high structural strength, which are widely used in advanced aircraft engines nowadays. Superplastic forming/diffusion bonding （SPF/DB） combined with numerical control （NC） milling is a major solution for manufacturing titanium hollow blades. Due to the shape deviation caused by multiple heat and pressure cycles in the SPF/DB process, it is hard to manufacture the leading and tailing edges by the milling process. This paper presents a new adaptive machining approach using free-form deformation to solve this problem. The actual SPF/DB shape of a hollow blade was firstly inspected by an on-machine measurement method. The measured point data were matched to the nominal SPF/DB shape with an improved ICP algorithm afterwards, by which the point-pairs between the measurement points and their corresponding points on the nominal SPF/DB shape were established, and the maximum modification amount of the final nominal shape was constrained. Based on the displacements between the point-pairs, an accurate FFD volume was iteratively calculated. By embedding the final nominal shape in the deformation space, a new final shape of the hollow blade was built. Finally, a series of measurement and machining tests was performed, the results of which validated the feasibility of the proposed adaptive machining approach.

Experimental Study of Effects of Tip Geometry on the Flow Field in a Turbine Cascade Passage

This study investigates the effects of blade tip geometry on the flow field of a turbine cascade at the incidence angle of 0 degree experimentally. The tests were performed in a low-speed turbine cascade wind tunnel. The Reynolds number based on the blade chord was about 172300 at the exit. Traverses of the exit flow field were made in order to measure the overall performance. The effects of using fiat tip and grooved tip with a chord-wise channel were studied. The case with the flat tip is referenced as the baseline. The tip clearances are all 1 mm measuring 0.84 percent of the blade span. The depth of channel is 2mm.The flow field at 10% chord downstream from the cascade trailing edge was measured at 38 span-wise positions and 26 pitch-wise positions using a mini five-hole pressure probe. The static pressure distribution on the tip end wall is measured at 16 pitch-wise stations and 17 chord-wise stations. Results show that there exists great pressure gradient in the pressure side for the fiat tip and the pressure side squealer tip, which means strong leakage flow. The pressure gradient from the pressure side to the suction side is greatly decreased for the grooved tip, and the resulting leakage flow is weaker. The core of the leakage vortex moves closer to the suction side for the pressure side squealer tip and farther away from the suction side for the suction side squealer tip. The pressure side squealer has little advantages over the fiat tip in improving the flow capacity and reducing the overall losses. The suction side squealer tip and grooved tip can effectively decrease the intensity of the tip leakage vortex, improve the flow capacity and reduce loss of the turbine cascade passage and the grooved tip performs the best.