Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Publication
    Life cycle analysis results for engine blisk LCA
    Purpose - The aviation industry has seen consistent growth over the past few decades. To maintain its sustainability and competitiveness, it is important to have a comprehensive understanding of the environmental impacts across the entire life cycle of the industry, including materials, processes and resources; manufacturing and production; lifetime services; reuse; end-of-life; and recycling. One important component of aircraft engines, integral rotors known as Blisks, are made of high-value metallic alloys that require complex and resource-intensive manufacturing processes. The purpose of this paper is to assess the ecological and economical impacts generated through Blisk production and thereby identify significant ‘hot-spots’. Design/methodology/approach - This paper focuses on the methodology and approach for conducting a full-scale Blisk life cycle assessment (LCA) based on ISO 14040/44. Unlike previous papers in the European Aerospace Science Network series, which focused on the first two stages of LCA, this publication delves into the "life cycle impact assessment" and "interpretation" stages, providing an overview of the life cycle inventory modeling, impact category selection and presenting preliminary LCA results for the Blisk manufacturing process chain. Findings - The result shows that the milled titanium Blisk has a lower CO2 footprint than the milled nickel Blisk, which is less than half of the global warming potential (GWP) of the milled nickel Blisk. A main contributor to GWP arises from raw material production. However, no recycling scenarios were included in the analysis, which will be the topic of further investigations. Originality/value - The originality of this work lies in the detailed ecological assessment of the manufacturing for complex engine components and the derivation of hot spots as well as potential improvements in terms of eco-footprint reduction throughout the products cradle-to-gate cycle. The LCA results serve as a basis for future approaches of process chain optimisation, use of "greener" materials and individual process improvements.
  • Publication
    Knowledge-Based Process Design Optimization in Blisk Manufacturing
    The manufacturing process of blade-integrated disks (blisks) represents one of the most challenging tasks in turbomachinery manufacturing. The requirement is to machine complex, thin-walled blade geometries with high aspect ratios made of difficult-to-cut materials. In addition, extremely tight tolerances are required, since the smallest deviations can lead to a reduction in efficiency of the blisk in the later use. Nowadays, the ramp-up phase for the manufacturing of a new blisk is time and cost-intensive. To find a suitable manufacturing process that meets the required tolerances of the blisk, many experimental tests with different process parameters and strategies are necessary. The used approach is often trial and error, which offers limited testing opportunities, is time-consuming and waste of resources. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to develop a knowledge-based process design optimization in blisk manufacturing. For this purpose, this paper picks up the results from our previous work. Based on these results, an experimental validation of the two process design tasks “number of blocks” and “block transition” is conducted. As part of the validation, the results of machining tests on a demonstrator blisk made of Inconel 718 are presented and discussed.