Technological and economical assessment of alternative process chains for blisk manufacture

Due to the increase of blisk (blade integrated disk) demands instead of the conventional fir-tree design in current aero-engine concepts there is a high resource-driven need for a comprehensive evaluation of different process chain alternatives for blisk manufacture. Therefore, in this paper different manufacturing chains consisting of roughing, pre-finishing and finishing/polishing are compared to each other by the example of a HPC-blisk out of Inconel 718. Beside conventional milling and electrochemical machining also alternative manufacturing technologies like wire-based laser cladding, water jet cutting and automated polishing are taken into account. Based on a technological analysis an adaptable methodology is introduced, which allows an independent economical assessment of different process chains regarding e.g. company-specific boundary conditions or different production quantities.