Virtual turbomachine blade contact gap inspection

A system for virtually inspecting contact gaps of a blade stage of a turbomachine, the blade stage having known dimensions, the system comprising:

• a computer system including at least one module configured to perform the following steps:
• extracting a geometric location data of a hard face plane of each shroud from a three-dimensional model of a shroud of each blade of the blade stage created by digitizing using a digitizing device;
• generating a three-dimensional virtual rendering of the shrouds of the blade stage based on the geometric location data and the known dimensions of the blade stage, the three-dimensional virtual rendering including a rendering of contact gaps between adjacent shrouds;
• and
• inspecting the blade stage using the three-dimensional virtual rendering.

A system for virtually inspecting contact gaps of a blade stage of a turbomachine, the blade stage having known dimensions, the system comprising:

• a digitizing device for obtaining a three-dimensional model of a shroud of each blade of the blade stage;
• a computer system including at least one module configured to perform the following steps:
• extracting a geometric location data of a hard place plane of each shroud from the three-dimensional model, the extracting including identifying an x, y and z coordinate of each hard face plane in space, and identifying an angular orientation of each hard face plane in space;
• generating a three-dimensional virtual rendering of the shrouds of the blade stage based on the geometric location data and the known dimensions of the blade stage, the three-dimensional virtual rendering including a rendering of contact gaps between adjacent shrouds, the generating including calculating a unit normal vector to each hard face plane, radially positioning each hard face plane relative to a common axis based on a shroud radius of the blade stage, and circumferentially positioning each hard face plane about the common axis using a spacing depending on the number of blades in the blade stage;
• and
• inspecting the blade stage using the three-dimensional virtual rendering by at least one of:
• a) expanding each hard face plane in the unit normal vector direction, and identifying interference between adjacent shrouds in response to an expanded hard face planes of adjacent shrouds intersecting;
• or
• b) measuring a contact gap between hard face planes of each pair of adjacent blades in the three-dimensional virtual rendering, and determining whether at least one contact gap parameter exceeds a respective threshold.