Study on laser cladding remanufacturing process with FeCrNiCu alloy powder for thin-wall impeller blade

The centrifugal compressor impeller is widely used in petroleum, chemicals, and other fields and is liable to failure in complicated working environment. Laser cladding as an advanced technology was used to remanufacture the failure impeller. And, remanufacture quality and service safety should be considered. In this paper, simulation and experiments were applied to study the remanufacturing process of failure thin-wall impeller blade. Firstly, a sequentially uncoupled 3D thermo-mechanical finite element (FE) model was developed to calculate temperature distribution and conduct mechanical analysis. Secondly, the impeller blade of repair region quality was studied based on microstructure analysis, microhardness, and tensile property tests. Finally, dynamic-balancing experiment, over-speed test, and dye penetration inspection were used to assess the security of remanufactured impeller. Numerical simulation showed that high temperature (about 1521 °C) and high residual stress (about 300 MPa) were distributed surrounding heat-affected zone (HAZ). And, experiments showed that the deformation of remanufactured impeller was 1.5 mm without no pores, cracks, slag inclusion, and other defects occurred in the remanufactured region.