One of the common failure modes of the diesel-engine turbochargers is the high-cycle fatigue (HCF) of the turbine-wheel blades. Mistuning of the blades due to the casting process is believed to contribute to this failure mode. Currently available commercial finite-element software requires high computational capacity to model statistical mistuning. The objective is to develop a simple model tailored for the evaluation of statistical mistuning in diesel-engine turbocharger turbine wheels that can be used in the product design stage. This research focuses on the radial turbine-wheel design that is typically used in 6–12 L diesel-engine applications. A continuous twisted-blade model is developed in matlab using finite element techniques. The model is tested and validated against different symmetrical cases as well as abaqus results.

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