An improved single-parameter tip-timing method for turbomachinery blade vibration measurements using optical laser probes

This paper presents an improved analysis method for the interpretation of the vibration data measured at turbomachinery blade tips using optical laser probes. A multi-degree-of-freedom numerical simulator, which includes the structural and geometric properties of the bladed-disk assembly, the external forcing terms and the characteristics of the optical probe, has been developed to assess the reliability of the various data processing techniques to identify the natural frequencies and mode shapes of bladed-disk assemblies. It has been demonstrated that the Zablotsky-Korostelev single parameter technique, which is a de-facto standard in the aerospace industries, has inherent limitations associated with it. An improved and more rigorous method is presented for deriving the blade arrival times and a non-linear solution technique is suggested for their numerical determination. Finally, the effect of blade mistuning on the accuracy of the proposed method is also investigated. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.