n industrial CT system for monitoring a running aero-engine

In order to improve aerodynamic performance and efficiency, monitoring the geometry and position information of the internal structure with the aero-engine under various operational statuses is an important task. In this paper, a novel design of industrial computed tomography (ICT) system with a linac as x-ray source is proposed to complete the task. The major advantage of the proposed system is that it can provide visualized images of internal structures of the running aero-engine without physical disturbance, which makes it possible to extract the accurate geometry information. The main idea behind this design is to measure the projection data from various views for reconstructions making use of the rotations of the aero-engine blades, instead of the mechanical rotations in the conventional ICT system. However, due to high speed rotation of the aero-engine blades, the system faces more challenges than conventional ICT systems both in data acquisitions and reconstruction algorithms. The challenges and corresponding solutions are presented in this paper. In conclusion, the proposed ICT system provides a powerful tool for monitoring the running aero-engines.