Reverse engineering in the design of turbine blades - a case study in applying the MAMDP

This paper presents a case study on the reverse engineering of turbine blad es used in nuclear power generators. Reverse engineering has been widely re cognised as a crucial step in the product design cycle. However, major prob lems with current reverse engineering technology are the inefficient surfac e reconstruction process, lack of digitising accuracy control in the data d igitisation process, and bottlenecks resulted from huge amounts of digitise d surface points in the surface modeling process. Moreover, under this limi tation, modern concurrent engineering concepts are difficult to implement t o obtain optimal product design. This study applies a developed reverse eng ineering approach - the modified adaptive model-based digitizing process (M AMDP) to the 3D geometric design of turbine blades. The approach integrates surface digitising and modeling processes of turbine blades into a single surface reconstruction process. Using the approach, accurate product CAD mo dels can be efficiently generated and the product design cycle of turbine b lades can be successfully linked. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.