Suite of Blade Measurement, Analysis Tools Offered

Renishaw offers hardware and software for CMMs that are specifically designed for measurement of aerospace blades, including ApexBlade planning software for Revo sweep scanning and DMIS programming, Modus airfoil analysis for the calculation and reporting of blade section profile and airfoil characteristics, and SurfitBlade to aid reverse engineering of the complete airfoil. All products complement Renishaw’s Revo five-axis measurement system and together are said to enable the whole blade to be inspected quickly and accurately based on high-precision contact probe data.

The ApexBlade software package quickly generates collision-free programs that drive the Revo system to carry out sweep scans that collect point-could data from across the blade surface. The CAD model is imported into the virtual Revo CMM environment prior to generating the measurement plan. Both transverse and longitudinal scans are supported, and each sweep can be split. A DMIS file is generated that can be executed within Renishaw’s Modus metrology software.

The software generates a cloud of tip center data points over the entire airfoil and root surfaces, and the Modus point cloud sectioning (MPCS) functionality enables the construction of on-surface sections by intersecting defined planes with the captured point cloud at any time. Via the Modus airfoil module, the nominal aerofoil sections available from the CAD model and the actual sections from the MPCS can be taken to provide blade fitting functionality for the reporting of blade section profile and aerofoil characteristics. Modus offers comprehensive graphical reporting tools and the profile measurement results, which are fully integrated with all other feature measurement reports, can be output in PDF file format.

For reverse engineering capability, Renishaw’s SurfitBlade software is an offline application used to generate NURBS blade surface forms for use in downstream processes such as computational fluid dynamics and finite element analysis. Average blade geometry can be established from a series of blade results.