Innovative manufacture of impulse turbine blades for wave energy power conversion

An innovative approach to the manufacture of impulse turbine blades using rapid prototyping, fused decomposition modelling (FDM), is presented in this paper. These blades were designed and manufactured by the Wave Energy Research Team (WERT) at the University of Limerick for the experimental analysis of a 0.6 m impulse turbine with fixed guide vanes for wave energy power conversion. The computer aided design/manufacture (CAD/CAM) package Pro-Engineer 2000i was used for three-dimensional solid modelling of the individual blades. A detailed finite element analysis (FEA) of the blades under centrifugal loads was performed using Pro-Mechanica. Based on this analysis and FDM machine capabilities, blades were redesigned. Finally, Pro-E data were transferred to an FDM machine for the manufacture of turbine blades. The objective of this paper is to present the innovative method used to design, modify and manufacture blades in a time and cost effective manner using a concurrent engineering approach.