A novel polishing technology for leading and trailing edges of aero-engine blade

As one of the most important part of an aero-engine, blade has a critical effect on its manufacturing level. Especially, surface quality and profile accuracy of the leading and trailing edges have a direct influence on the aerodynamic performance of an aero-engine. At present, the machining methods of the leading and trailing edges are milling or grinding firstly, and then polishing by hand. This combination pattern of milling or grinding and polishing by hand has low efficiency and poor consistency. Therefore, a novel polishing technology for leading and trailing edges of blade using the flexible polishing wheel is proposed in this manuscript. Firstly, the overview of proposed novel polishing technology is presented. And then the basic principle and flexible polishing law of the flexible polishing wheel are introduced and analyzed. Finally, the verification experiments are carried out, including sample verification and blade verification. And the experiments results validate the feasibility of the proposed polishing technology. This novel polishing technology which instead of combination pattern of milling and polishing can simultaneously guarantee both profile accuracy and surface roughness, and the machining efficiency of blade edges will improve 2 times than the conventional method.