Overview on the profile measurement of turbine blade and its development

Turbine machinery has an extraordinary wide range of applications in the aviation, aerospace, automotive, energy and many other industries. The turbine blade is one of the most important parts of turbine machinery, and the characteristic parameters, pressure ratio of the engine and rotating speed of the turbine are all related to the shape and size of blades. Therefore, the profile measurement of turbine blade is an essential issue in the blade machining processing, however, it is difficult and particular to establish the profile measurement of turbine blade because of its complicated shapes and space angles of the blades, and the specific stringent environmental requirements need a more appropriate measurement method to the Turbine Blade profile measurement. This paper reviews the recent research and development on the Turbine Blade profile measurement methods, which mainly describes several common and advanced measurement methods, such as the traditional coordinate measuring machines, some optical measurement methods with the characteristics of non-contact like optical theodolite, three-dimensional photography, laser interferometry, as well as the laser triangulation method studied more recently and so on. Firstly, the measuring principles, the key technical issues and the applications in the Turbine Blade profile measurement of the methods which are mentioned above are described respectively in detail, and the characteristics of those methods are analyzed in this paper. Furthermore, the scope of application and limitations of those measurement methods are summed up. Finally, some views on the current research focus and perspective trend of the Turbine Blade profile measurement technology are presented.