Investigation of the effect of vibration characteristics on the grinding performance of aero-engine blade tip

The machining quality of the blade tip has a great influence on the service performance and life of the aero-engine blade. The recent paper investigates the effect of vibration during the grinding process of the GH4169 nickel-based superalloy blade tip. Moreover, this paper proposes a theoretical model to link the unbalance of the grinding wheel, the vibration, and the surface topography characteristics of the blade. The results show that the blade vibration during grinding and the resulting non-linear change of the grinding depth could reduce the surface quality of the blade tip and lead to differences in the surface quality of the blade tip in different areas, where the surface roughness in the entry area zone I is the largest, in the exit area zone III is the second largest, and the intermediate area zone III is the smallest. Grinding depth has a greater impact on the difference of the surface quality in the blade tip grinding process, especially when the grinding depth is greater than 4 μm, the difference of surface roughness increases significantly. On the other hand, the feed rate has little effect on the difference in surface quality. Adding damping block can reduce the surface roughness of the blade tip; however, it does not reduce the difference in surface quality.