Fan Blade Storage Container Segmentation and Retention
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Solution Overview
Problem
Fan blades in gas turbine engines are susceptible to damage during transportation due to impact, twisting, and lateral forces, requiring specialized handling to maintain integrity for inspection and analysis.
Innovation Solution
A storage container with compartments and retention holders that secure fan blades by press fit, preventing lateral and twisting movements, and a container lid that forms a press fit with the housing to prevent transverse movement, ensuring secure and damage-free transport.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If fan blades are transported without specialized containment, then transportation cost and complexity are reduced, but the blades become susceptible to damage from impact, twisting, and lateral forces
Solution Approach 1:
The container is divided into multiple compartments, each designed to hold a single fan blade. This segmentation isolates each blade from potential damage sources and allows for customized retention structures tailored to specific blade configurations, thereby improving reliability while maintaining manageable complexity.
Solution Approach 2:
Retention holders serve as intermediary elements between the blade and the container walls. These holders provide a controlled interface that prevents direct contact between the blade and potentially damaging container surfaces, reducing harmful forces while maintaining structural simplicity.
2Reliability
If retention holders are made permanent in compartments, then blade security against lateral and twisting movement is improved, but ease of access for inspection and removal deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The retention holders are designed with movable characteristics, allowing them to be easily inserted into and removed from the compartments. This dynamic design enables the holders to provide secure retention when in place while allowing quick access when needed, resolving the contradiction between security and ease of operation.
3Ease of operation
If the container lid is made loosely fitted, then ease of access and assembly is improved, but transverse movement and potential damage to blades during transportation increases
Solution Approach 1:
The pressing function is extracted from the lid itself and transferred to dedicated pressing members located within the compartments. This allows the lid to be loosely fitted for ease of assembly while the separate pressing members provide the necessary constraint against transverse movement, resolving the contradiction between ease of operation and reliability.
4Productivity
If multiple fan blades are transported together without separation, then transportation efficiency is improved, but the risk of impact contact and damage between blades increases
Solution Approach 1:
The container is divided into multiple compartments, each designed to hold a single fan blade. This segmentation isolates each blade from potential damage sources while allowing multiple blades to be transported together in a single container, thus maintaining transportation efficiency while preventing impact damage.
Data Source
AI summary
A storage container for shipping fan blades includes blade compartments each housing one or more fan blades, where each compartment includes an upper foam retention holder that maintains a fan blade tip end in place and a lower foam retention holder that maintains a blade root in place, both holders configured and positioned to prevent twisting or lateral movement of the blades when in the compartment. The compartments form container rows, such that a housing of the storage container has one or more retainer walls that are movable between an access position allowing user access to insert and remove fan blades from compartments and retaining position blocking user access to insert and remove fan blades from compartments.