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MTU Aero Engines: Engine manufacturing at its best
Munich, June 20, 2011 – Compressors and turbines made by MTU are among the finest to be found in the marketplace. Another field in which the company, which has been providing propulsion systems to power aircraft for decades, has become a world leader is manufacturing techniques. "Our technological capabilities are top-notch," says Richard Maier, Senior Vice President Production Development and Support at MTU Aero Engines in Munich. In some manufacturing technology areas, MTU is the undisputed Number One in the world.
Among the most important high-tech processes in use at Germany's leading engine manufacturer are lasercaving, a technique used to produce contoured cooling air holes in high-pressure turbine blades and vanes, as well as adaptive milling and friction welding for blisk production. Additive manufacturing processes, such as selective laser melting, which builds up components layer by layer, are beginning to play an increasingly important role. They save time in production, speed up innovation cycles, permit lighter and more functional compo-nents to be produced, and bring down development costs.
Lasercaving
MTU's engine specialists have developed the lasercaving technique and hold a global patent on this method of manufacturing, which combines two separate processes – laser drilling and laser ablation – and is a key technology when it comes to boosting turbine efficiency further. It uses a laser to generate flared cooling air holes in high-pressure turbine blades and vanes. Through such holes, the outflowing air spreads more advantageously over the component sur-face. As a result, less cooling air is required and efficiency is improved. On the GP7000, which powers the Airbus A380 megaliner, high-pressure turbine efficiency is increased by one percent, with a resulting reduction in fuel burn in the same order of magnitude of one percent.
Blisk manufacture
Blisks (blade integrated disks) are high-tech components manufactured in one piece that eliminate the need to fix separately manufactured blades to the disk. This increases strength and reduces weight. Blisks are used in low-pressure and high-pressure compressors for military and commercial applications. Says production expert Maier: "We're currently also looking into options to use blisks in turbines." MTU is one of the leading manufacturers of blisks worldwide, producing about 600 of the components a year; by 2020, this figure is expected to grow to 3,000. To be able to cope with this workload, the company is building a new shop on its premises in Munich, which will house its new center of excellence for blisk production.
Larger blisk airfoils are fitted to the disk one by one by linear friction welding and then finish-machined by adaptive milling. Medium-sized and small airfoils are milled from the solid. Tandem blisks and compressor spools – several successive compressor stages arranged in line – are produced by rotary friction welding. MTU's shop in Munich boasts the world's largest and most precise rotary friction welding machine. The equipment, which is about 20 meters in length, is a double-spindle configuration that permits a wide range of components to be welded with an ultra-high degree of accuracy. When friction welding compressor spools, a pressure of 1,000 metric tons is applied.
For MTU, friction welding is a key technology needed for the production of rotors for next-generation engines that are made from higher-strength materials and are markedly larger in size than conventional components. The technique lends itself to the manufacture of more compact, highly integrated compressor rotors made from titanium and nickel-base materials whose reduced weight helps cut down on fuel consumption. Other processes in MTU's portfolio are inductive high-frequency pressure welding, which is used to fit mid-sized titanium blades to disks, and precise electrochemical machining (PECM), which is used to produce small blisk blades.
Additive manufacturing processes
Additive manufacturing processes are innovative 3D printing methods that at MTU are currently used to produce component prototypes. Says Maier: "Within the next years, we expect to also manufacture production parts in this manner." One of the techniques is selective laser melting (SLM), where in a first step, a 3D CAD model of the component to be produced is sliced up. A laser then builds up the solid equivalent of the model layer by layer from a powdered material. The powder particles are locally melted and fused together. This process allows the tool-free production of complex components that are extremely difficult if not impossible to manufacture using conventional methods. The flexibility of the process makes it particularly suitable for low-volume production and for one-off components.
MTU Aero Engines is Germany’s only independent engine manufacturer and a long-established player in the engine community. The company develops, manufactures, markets and supports commercial and military aero engines and industrial gas turbines. The company operates affiliates around the globe and has a total workforce of some 7,900 employees. In fiscal 2010, MTU posted consolidated sales of about 2.7 billion euros. In the military arena, MTU is Germany's industrial lead company for practically all engines flown by the country's armed forces; in the commercial area, MTU Maintenance is the world's largest independent provider of engine maintenance services.
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