Applications
Aerospace.
Critical parts, zero compromise.
Inspection tasks
Every wall, every cooling hole.
Turbine blades, structural castings and printed parts carry their critical features inside. CT measures internal walls and finds cracks, pores and inclusions, including in large and dense parts.
Turbine blades
Wall thickness, core shift and cooling holes are measured on the CT volume and compared with the CAD model. Deviations appear as a colour map.
Structural castings and welds
Porosity, shrinkage, inclusions and weld defects are located in three dimensions, so the decision to accept, rework or scrap rests on position and size.
Large and dense parts
High-energy CT penetrates thick sections that lower-energy systems cannot. Fine cracks and small pores remain visible in large components.
All these inspection tasks are covered in detail in our aerospace presentation.
Scan examples
What the data shows.
Systems
Penetration and precision for flight-critical parts.
Royma offers CT for the parts that decide airworthiness: turbine blades, structural castings, brackets, printed components and assemblies. For large and dense parts the RMCT10000 replaces the X-ray tube with a linear accelerator of 1 to 9 MeV and scans castings, thick welds and complete assemblies that a conventional source cannot penetrate, with sample loads up to 1000 kg. For long parts and assemblies the RMCT7000 gantry CT scans the part lying flat, up to 2000 × 420 × 160 mm as standard.
Flat and thin parts are covered as well: the RMCT8000 inspects long, flat assemblies up to 3500 × 600 mm in 2D with 20 µm resolution, and the RMPCT5500 separates the layers of avionics boards with planar CT. Together the systems cover the range from a single blade on the laboratory table to a structural casting in a room installation.
The result is a complete volume of the part, from which wall thickness, cooling-hole diameters, porosity and inclusions are measured and compared with the CAD model. Aerospace manufacturers gain an inspection record for the whole part instead of a section, and a measurement they can repeat on the next part in the same set-up.
In practice
From volume to acceptance decision.
On a turbine blade the software measures the wall thickness at every position, checks core shift and reports the diameter and angle of each cooling hole against the drawing. On a casting the pores are listed with volume, position and distance to the machined surface, so the decision to accept, rework or scrap is based on whether machining will open a pore, not on a general porosity grade.
Every scan is stored with its parameters, and the analysis runs as a saved recipe, so the same part type is evaluated the same way on every shift. Royma Europe carries out test scans on customer parts before a system is specified, so the energy, the resolution and the scan time are proven on the real component.
Questions
Questions about CT for aerospace.
- Which CT energy suits a large aerospace casting?
- That depends on wall thickness and material. Aluminium castings of moderate thickness are scanned with the 450 or 600 kV mini-focus source of the RMCT6000; thick steel or nickel-alloy sections and complete assemblies are scanned with the 1 to 9 MeV linear accelerator of the RMCT10000. A test scan settles the choice.
- Can CT measure turbine-blade wall thickness and cooling holes?
- Yes. The wall thickness is measured across the complete blade on the CT volume and shown as a colour map against the nominal contour; cooling-hole diameters and positions are measured in the same data set.
- How are long parts and assemblies scanned?
- On the RMCT7000 gantry CT the part rests on the table and the source and detector rotate around it. Long parts are scanned without repositioning, and assemblies are scanned as built.
- Is the inspection documented for audits?
- Each scan is stored with its parameters and the analysis recipe, and the report contains the slices, the measurement table and the pass or fail result, so the inspection of a serial number can be reproduced later.
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