If one could increase the average engine temperature of the world's jets by one degree Celsius, the fuel savings alone would be worth around $1 billion per year. Using a similar strategy to increase the efficiency of our vehicle fleet by 3 miles per gallon would save roughly a million barrels of oil a day.
Figure 1. Micrographs of a new class of carbide and nitride materialsùthe MAX phasesùare both colorful and revealing (top). The patches of different hues indicate distinct crystal domains or grains, each made up of thousands of nanolayers of titanium silicon carbide. (Image shows a region 0.7 by 0.5 micrometer.) In this micrograph, the large orange grains of Ti3SiC2 are growing by consuming the much smaller grains in the foreground. The large grains were pre-oriented by a hot forging process. Such aligned microstructures are ductile even at room temperature. These properties would be ideal in future high-performance applications such as jet engines for aircraft. Current engine technology (such as the 100-inch-diameter PW4000 at right, developed in the early 1990s and used in Airbus A330 wide-bodied twinjets) is limited by materials failure at high temperatures. Lighter materials and engines that could operate at higher temperatures would provide immense benefits in cost savings and fuel efficiency.
Micrograph by Patricia Lyons; engine photograph courtesy of Pratt & Whitney
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