Fringe Projection Profilometry for Three-Dimensional Measurement of Aerospace Blades

Abstract

The aero-engine serves as the “heart” of an aircraft and is a primary factor determining the aircraft’s performance. Among the crucial components in the core of aero-engines, aero-engine compressor blades stand out as extremely important. They are not only numerous but also characterized by a multitude of parameters, making them the most complex parts in an aero-engine. This paper aims to address the trade-off between accuracy and efficiency in the existing measurement methods for asymmetric blades. Non-contact measurements were conducted using a structured light system composed of a stereo camera and a DLC projector. The point cloud data of the blades are processed using methods such as the PCA (Principal Component Analysis) algorithm, binary search, and least squares fitting. This paper established a fringe-projection profilometry light sensor system for the multi-view measurement of the blades. High-precision rotary tables are utilized to rotate and extract complete spatial point cloud data of aviation blades. Finally, measurements and comparative experiments on the blade body are conducted. The obtained blade point cloud data undergo sorting and denoising processes, resulting in improved measurement accuracy. The measurement error of the blade chord length is 0.001%, the measurement error of blade maximum thickness is 0.895%, compared to CMM (Coordinate Measuring Machine), where the measurement error of chord is 0.06%.

Keywords

• aero-engine blades
• fringe projection profilometry
• point cloud processing
• blade assessment