Evaluation of Turbine Blades Using Computed Tomography

Turbine blades are high value castings having complex internal geometry. Computed Tomography has been employed on Turbine blades for finding out defects and internal details. The wall thickness, rib thickness and radius of curvature are measured from the CT slices. The discontinuities including blockages of cooling passages in the cast material can be detected. 3D visualization of the turbine blade provides in extracting its internal features including inaccessible areas nondestructively, which is not possible through conventional NDE methods. The salient features for evaluation of turbine blades using Tomography are brought out.