At the Limit, Part One

Yes, I know, we’ve blogged about engines and turbine blades before, but a friend recently pointed out an interesting radio program on the subject of aircraft engines.

“Engines at the Limit – Research for Even Better Aircraft Turbines” was the title of the program by Ralf Krauter on the German radio station SWR2. Roughly summarized, the main topic was research into new, better, and more efficient aircraft turbines. Aircraft engines are very complex components and their manufacture is correspondingly challenging.

20,000 individual parts, 6.5 (metric) tons

An Airbus A-380 engine weighs 6.5 (metric) tons and consists of about 20,000 individual parts. At full thrust, this engine sucks in enormous quantities of air and a lot of kerosene flows into the combustion chamber. Here, the temperature rises to more than 2,000 degrees centigrade, which turns the turbine blades into red-hot metal. Without a cooling system, the blades would quickly melt.

So that the blades can withstand this, they are manufactured from extremely formidable materials, such as titanium, nickel superalloys, Inconel, or tungsten-molybdenum alloys. For these components to reach their optimum efficiency in the turbine, everything must be 100% right: from surface quality to dimensional accuracy. Grinding is therefore generally the first choice for machining.

Previously, turbine blades had to be removed for exact measurements using the external measuring equipment and then newly clamped in the grinding machine for grinding to continue. Now our engineers have optimized the measuring system integrated into our grinding machines so that the previously unavoidable deflections of the measuring sensor can be accounted for with a compensation program. This way, we can achieve a repeatable precision in the machine of just a few µm with just a single clamping operation!

At the Limit, Part Two
It doesn’t get quite as hot in a Pitts engine as it does in an Airbus engine. However, the things that my colleague Thomas Bader gets up to with this aircraft in his limited free time are pretty sizzling.

By the way, Thomas likes to take passengers along, and he can also explain why we at Haas Schleifmaschinen think that it is not just above the clouds – but also when grinding – that freedom should be as limitless as possible.

Wishing you always a good flight,

Dirk Wember