Case Study: QuEST Global achieves six-fold low-cycle fatigue life improvement and multi‑million‑dollar tooling cost avoidance with ANSYS

QuEST Global - Customer Case Study

QuEST Global faced life-limiting stress concentrations in turbomachinery rotors where flat-profile dovetails attached blades. The challenge was to redesign the dovetail and rotor web to meet gas-turbine life requirements while avoiding added manufacturing or tooling cost. QuEST Global worked with ANSYS using ANSYS software within a design-of-experiments (DOE) framework to explore discrete and continuous design variables and constrain solutions to existing tooling.

ANSYS supported selection of the design space and DOE-driven iterations that led to a round-profile dovetail and increased web overhang, strengthening the rotor web below the dovetail. Using ANSYS for analysis and final qualification, the change produced a six-fold improvement in low-cycle fatigue, significantly reduced hoop stresses, met all rotor life requirements, and avoided a potential multi-million-dollar tooling cost; rotor bending rose marginally due to added mass but no rim closure occurred.

QuEST Global