Developing Novel Superalloys for Aerospace Materials

Gas-turbine engine development for the aerospace industry continues to strive for improved fuel efficiency, reduced emissions and a reduction in noise at take-off. Nickel-based superalloys are widely used in gas turbines and much effort has previously gone into understanding the relationship between composition, microstructure and properties. However, the scope for further developing nickel-based alloys is diminishing and therefore the rate of improvement of aero engine technology is decreasing. There is, therefore, an opportunity to investigate alternative lightweight alloy systems, which may also be able to operate under high temperatures, handle greater stresses and remain in service for longer.

Leigh Connor from the Industry team is a co-investigator on an Innovate UK supported project on the high throughput development of superalloys. The main grant partners are Diamond, Ilika plc and University of Cambridge; the research team also benefits from the participation of Rolls Royce through the programme steering committee. The goals of the project are to use high throughput, or combinatorial, techniques which involve the rapid synthesis of large numbers of different structurally-related materials in a few automated processing steps. The project started in 2014 and the results will be published in due course.