3D Printed Turbine Blades for Jet Engines

Abstract

The issue this paper seeks to address is improving aircraft range by increasing turbine efficiency. This is done by using 3D printing to create turbine blades with optimized internal cooling passages which can survive at higher turbine inlet temperatures and not melt, thereby increasing turbine efficiency. A relation between range and turbine inlet temperature was leveraged to deduce how much of a temperature increase was needed to obtain range increases of 250 and 500 nautical miles. A MATLAB finite element analysis was then implemented to investigate the needed heat transfer coefficients for blades operating at these increased temperature values. A maximum value of 138 wm2K was found to be needed for a 500 nautical mile range increase which is well within current state of the art 3D turbine blade internal cooling passage designs.