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Electrochemical machining of blisk channels via synchronous rotations of the workpiece and the radial feeding cathode employing various feed rates

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Abstract

Electrochemical machining (ECM) is one of main methods used to process blisks, and it involves two stages: channel machining and blade profile machining. Any uneven distribution of the allowance in channel machining will transfer to the subsequent blade profile machining. Therefore, improving the uniformity of allowance distribution during channel machining is crucial. Herein, a novel blisk channel ECM method is developed, in which the cathode rotates while feeding radially with various feed rates, while the workpiece also rotates slightly. The cathode rotation and radial feeding with various feed rates could adapt to the rotation from the tip to the root of a standard blade and the difference in width between adjacent standard blades at the tip and the root. The slight rotation of workpiece could fit the distorted shape of a standard blade along the radial direction in the axial section, thereby further reducing the difference in allowance for blisk channel ECM. This report establishes the mathematical relationships between the allowance difference based on the electrode rotational angles, and the feed rate of the cathode. These mathematical relationships revealed changes in the optimized rotational angles of the electrodes with the feed depth, which enabled the optimized cathode feed rate to be determined. Three-dimensional dynamic simulations of the blisk channel ECM process were conducted, and the allowance distributions of the predicted blisk channels from various methods were obtained; the results indicate that the machining accuracy was improved for the proposed method. The blisk channels were processed experimentally by several ECM methods for comparison. The proposed method led to allowance differences in the concave and convex parts as low as 0.60 and 0.53 mm, respectively, which corresponded to 34.8% and 55.5% reductions compared with the conventional ECM method. These demonstrated improvements help with subsequent blade profile machining, and prove that the proposed method is effective.

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Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China for Creative Research Groups (grant number 51921003) and the National Science and Technology Major Project (grant number 2017-VII-0004–0097).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 29 Yudao Street, Nanjing, 210016, China

    Jing Wang, Zhengyang Xu & Di Zhu

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  1. Jing Wang
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  2. Zhengyang Xu
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  3. Di Zhu
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Contributions

Jing Wang: validation, investigation, data curation, experiment, writing—original draft, methodology. Zhengyang Xu: conceptualization, review and editing, supervision. Di Zhu: conceptualization, review and editing, supervision, funding acquisition.

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Correspondence to Zhengyang Xu.

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Wang, J., Xu, Z. & Zhu, D. Electrochemical machining of blisk channels via synchronous rotations of the workpiece and the radial feeding cathode employing various feed rates. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 125, 1213–1228 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-022-10782-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-022-10782-3

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