Macroscopic process simulation of surface and profile grinding processes estimating forces for the production of turbine blades
Adina Grimmert, Petra Wiederkehr
Abstract
In aerospace industry surface and profile grinding processes are widely used for the manufacturing of turbine blades. Maximizing the productivity is a key factor for industry, which can be achieved by reducing the number of cuts necessary in order to remove the remaining millimeters of stock material after casting. This leads to high depth of cut values and, therefore, considerably high process forces. Turbine blades are highly flexible workpieces resulting in process induced deflections. In order to avoid mechanical damages of the workpiece during the process, a macroscopic grinding simulation is used, which is presented in this paper. For this process simulation a coupled multiphysics FE model was created using the software COMSOL Multiphysics. First, the material removal was evaluated using the deformed geometry module of the software. Based on the current material removal the process forces were calculated using an experimentally calibrated grinding force model. The forces were subsequently applied onto the grinding area allowing for a calculation of the resulting stresses and deflections. Further, the simulation was extended for profile grinding processes using an inclined grinding wheel and a fir tree profile of a turbine blade. The simulated forces were validated based on experimentally conducted grinding processes.