Laser Melting Deposition Repair for Compressor Blades: Robotic Path Automatic Planning and Experimental Research
LIANG Xufeng1, CAI Zhenhua1, LIU Qi2,3,4, MU Zixin1, ZENG Chunnian1, NIU Shaopeng5, DENG Chunming5
1. School of Automation, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan 430070, China;
2. Science and Technology on Power Beam Processes Laboratory, AVIC Manufacturing Technology Institute, Beijing 100024, China;
3. Beijing Key Laboratory of High Power Beam Additive Manufacturing Technology and Equipment, Beijing 100024, China;
4. Aeronautical Key Laboratory for Additive Manufacturing Technologies, Beijing 100024, China;
5. Institute of New Materials, Guangdong Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou 510651, China
This paper studies a laser melting deposition path generation strategy based on industrial robots to addressthe repair problem of aero-engine TC17 high-pressure compressor blades after service damage. This method can analyze the blade damage area with model Boolean operations and embeds a secondary development plug-in in the RobotStudio offline programming software to generate Zigzag-axial, centerline-offset, and edge-helical scanning paths. The path simulation and deposition topography analysis show that when the scanning speed is 5 mm/s, the deposition layer thickness is 0.3 mm, and the overlap ratio is 50%, the centerline-offset scanning path can maintain the speed stable for 95.97% of time, and the speed decline of turning point is tinier. Simultaneously, the formed height after deposition is close to 0.3 mm, and the height fluctuation variance is relatively small with excellent flatness. Furthermore, simulations and experiments on rectangular flat-plate regions show that a continuous path, such as Zigzag scanning path, can dramatically reduce residual stress on the formed surface.