Techniques

for IBD Life Cycle Management

Evaluate the vibratory health of your IBDs and how they change over time so that you can control HCF. If a part does fail from HCF, the evaluation records provide critical information to help establish root cause, identify parts with similar tendencies and efficiently manage the fleet.

EzVIBES® vibration assessment system

BDC’s EzVIBES performs a vibration test on an IBD that simulates the type of traveling wave excitation that it would experience in the engine.

BDC’s EzID™ software analyzes the vibratory response to extract the vibration characteristics of the part, its Vibratory DNA®, to determine if they meet established standards. If they do not, then BDC’s SmartBlend® technology can be used to determine how to repair (blend) the part so that it does have acceptable vibratory response.

EzID software characterizes IBD’s vibratory response

BDC has proprietary software for analyzing blade vibration data called EzID. EzID determines the quantities that control the vibratory response of an IBD :

  • The nodal diameter map of the IBD
  • Each blade’s frequency deviation

Essentially, they provide the vibratory “DNA” of the IBD, i.e. if two parts have similar DNA they will have similar vibratory response. If an IBD’s nodal diameter map and blade frequency variations are within the norm, then the IBD can be safely returned to service.

SmartBlend System for repairs

BDC’s SmartBlend technology uses the vibratory response measured on a damaged IBD to guide a blade repair. This is accomplished with the combination of EzVIBES, EzID, and the Fundamental Mistuning Model, FMM, BDC’s proprietary software for calculating the vibratory response of an IBD. FMM calculates how changing a blade’s frequency affects its vibratory response. Consequently, FMM can be used to guide repairs that lowers the IBD’s vibratory response.

Single or high-volume IBD characterization and reporting

In addition to some simple Go / No-Go criteria that can be implemented during the EzVIBES evaluation, the vibration data can be processed to provide you with detailed information about the vibratory state of the part, i.e. its Vibratory DNA. Once the Vibratory DNA of an IBD is known, it can be compared with the rest of the fleet, or used to track how the IBD changes over time. Extracting the Vibratory DNA reduces a gigabyte of vibration data down to a few key parameters that can be summarized in reports and stored in a searchable database.

BDC’s Data Browser is an easily searchable database

If an IBD fails from HCF then we need to determine the underlying cause of the failure. The information in the data base can be queried to help establish how it failed and the specific characteristics that led to the failure. The database can then be searched to find other IBDs with similar characteristics. Identifying these parts that are at higher risk allows them to be flagged for repair first so that IBD’s vibration level can be reduced and the part returned service.

The database also provides information that’s needed for fleet prognostics. In order to anticipate failures and reduce downtime, predictive diagnostics estimate a failure event before it occurs and also identify the causes of degradation leading to a failure. You can use this information to plan a maintenance action before engine performance is affected.