SOLUTION METHODS FOR THE BALANCING OF JET TURBINES

Citation
A. Mason et M. Ronnqvist, SOLUTION METHODS FOR THE BALANCING OF JET TURBINES, Computers & operations research, 24(2), 1997, pp. 153-167
Citations number
21
Categorie Soggetti
Operatione Research & Management Science","Operatione Research & Management Science","Computer Science Interdisciplinary Applications","Engineering, Industrial
ISSN journal
03050548
Volume
24
Issue
2
Year of publication
1997
Pages
153 - 167
Database
ISI
SICI code
0305-0548(1997)24:2<153:SMFTBO>2.0.ZU;2-I
Abstract
Turbine balancing is an important and regular maintenance operation at airline companies. As a result of manufacturing inaccuracies, variati ons occur in the weights of the blades that can, in turn, lead to sign ificant out-of-balance forces on the engine. The overall time required for balancing can be decreased significantly if the best placement of turbine blades is first determined mathematically. This problem is fo rmulated as a variation of the quadratic assignment problem and a numb er of solution schemes are investigated. A neighbourhood search algori thm is found to outperform the other solution approaches significantly when applied to data from a major South Pacific airline. The neighbou rhood search algorithm can be combined with various strategies to init ialize starting points. The use of starting points obtained from a Lag rangean dual scheme is shown to improve results for large problems. Co pyright (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd