This paper presents a computational approach for optimal robust design and tolerancing of turbomachinery compressor blades that are subject to geometric variability. This approach simultaneously determines the optimal blade geometry and manufacturing tolerances to minimize the overall cost of producing and operating the resulting compressor blades. A pathwise sensitivity method is used to compu...

Turbine blades are high value castings having complex internal geometry. Computed Tomography has been employed on Turbine blades for finding out defects and internal details. The wall thickness, rib thickness and radius of curvature are measured from the CT slices. The discontinuities including blockages of cooling passages in the cast material can be detected. 3D visualization of the turbine b...

PURPOSE To assess the relative efficacy of three types of controls in reducing respirable silica exposure during artificial stone countertop cutting with a handheld circular saw. APPROACH A handheld worm drive circular saw equipped with a diamond segmented blade was fitted with water supply to wet the blade as is typical. The normal wetted-blade condition was compared to (i) wetted-blade plus...

The dynamic stability of a coupled tower-blade wind turbine system is investigated analytically and experimentally. Coupled equations of motion and associated boundary conditions for the wind tower and a rotating blade are derived by considering the lateral acceleration of the nacelle at the tip of the tower, which is the base of the flexible blade. The coupled eigenvalues are computed for vari...

Nowadays, the challenge in hydraulic turbine design is the multi-objective design of turbine runner to reach higher efficiency. The hydraulic performance of a turbine is strictly depends on runner blades shape. The present paper focuses on the application of the multi-objective optimization algorithm to the design of a small Francis turbine runner. The optimization exercise focuses on the effic...

In rowing, power is inevitably lost as kinetic energy is imparted to the water during push-off with the blades. Power loss is estimated from reconstructed blade kinetics and kinematics. Traditionally, it is assumed that the oar is completely rigid and that force acts strictly perpendicular to the blade. The aim of the present study was to evaluate how reconstructed blade kinematics, kinetics, a...

Turbine blades of a gas turbine are responsible for extracting energy from the high temperature, high pressure gases. These blades are operated at elevated temperatures in aggressive environments and are subjected to large centrifugal forces. As many as 42 percent of the failures in gas turbine engines were only due to blading problems and the failures in these turbine blades can have dramatic ...

A new application of utilizing ultra-wideband (UWB) technology to sense wind turbine blade deflections is introduced in this paper for wind energy cost reduction. The lower UWB band of 3.1-5.3 GHz is applied. On each blade, there will be one UWB blade deflection sensing system, which consists of two UWB antennas at the blade root and one UWB antenna at the blade tip. The detailed topology and c...