Manufacturers are busy inventive with materials

Manufacturers are busy inventive with materials

In the metal forging plant, manfacturers are working hard with high tech and new ingredients. It is small enough to be held in your hand and looks like an unremarkable chunk of metal perforated with tiny holes, but it is fiendishly hard to make. That is because it must spin 12,000 times a minute under high pressure at a temperature of 1,600°C, 200°C above the melting point of the material it is made from. And it must survive that twisting inferno long enough to propel an airliner for 24m km (15m miles) before being replaced. In all, 66 of these stubby blades are used in the rear turbine of a Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engine, and the British company makes hundreds of thousands of these blades a year.
American and European firms have sought salvation in high-end manufacturing from the onslaught of low-cost producers. That increasingly involves becoming more inventive with materials. This article will look at a number of such innovations, including the special casting system for the Rolls-Royce turbine blades as well as the use of carbon fibre, recycled plastic waste, new battery technology and others.
As developing countries become richer and more sophisticated, they too want to make things like aircraft, jet engines and high-performance sports cars. In some cases Western firms subcontract part of the production work to firms in countries trying to build up the capabilities of their industries, usually when those countries are placing big orders. But some things are not for sharing because they are too important to preserve a product’s competitive advantage.
For Rolls-Royce, turbine blades are one of those key technologies. The magic that creates them depends on a deep understanding of materials science and production technology. When metals solidify after casting they normally contain lots of microscopic crystals. That would still leave them strong enough for most things, but it is a potential weakness in a turbine blade. So Rolls-Royce uses a unique system which casts the blade in a nickel-based super-alloy with a continuous and unbroken crystalline structure. This ensures there will be no structural defects.
Air circulates through the blade’s hollow centre and out through precisely positioned holes, formed by a special electronic process because no conventional drill is accurate enough. The holes create a film of air which flows across the surface to prevent the blade from melting. The blade is also covered with a heat-resistant ceramic coating. The makers go to such lengths because a rugged and heat-resistant blade allows a jet cone crusher engine to run hotter, improving combustion and reducing fuel consumption.