MATERIALS AND PROCESSES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF GAS-TURBINE ENGINES

This paper discusses the importance of materials and processes in the development of gas turbine engines. The progressive enhancement of their technical performances has been based on the availability of more and more heat resistant and lighter and lighter materials. Along the past decades, the development of such materials and associated processes of melting and transformation has been carried out by the steel makers as long as they got direct or indirect advantages of their efforts. The increased complexity of the engines, the more and more specific needs of the designers have progressively modified, since the end of the seventies, the terms of this industrial collaboration. This movement has been driven on the technical aspect by the rapid expansion of computerized methods of design, and recently accelerated by the simultaneous crisis of both civil and military markets, which focused the interest of the engine producers on the acquisition cost of innovative programmes. solutions for the carrier. A physical modelization of materials processes allows, with the support of a large scientific community the exact adaptation of innovative materials and processes to more and more stringent specifications, through the use of convenient numerical simulations. This new approach is made possible by a careful strategy of materials and processes development anticipating the future needs of engine and aircraft programmes.