Toward improved durability in advanced aircraft engine hot sections

Advanced aircraft turbine engine durability needs were addressed in the NASA sponsored Hot Section Technology (HOST) Project. The seven-year project, which was concluded in late 1987, involved representatives from six engineering disciplines who were spread across three work sectors. To address more fully the technology needs resulting from durability challenges, the NASA Lewis Research Center encouraged researchers from the disciplines of instrumentation, combustion, turbine heat transfer, structural analysis, fatigue and fracture, and surface protection to work together, and prompted both basic and applications-oriented research within each of the six disciplines. This involved scientists and engineers from three work sectors: academia, where significant basic research usually is performed; industry, where research as well as applications work is addressed; and NASA, which supports both basic and applications research and has the resources to link the other two sectors. Research results from the HOST project have been reported in approximately 250 technical reports. The ASME 33rd International Gas Turbine and Aeroengine Congress and Exposition, conducted in June 1988, provided a timely and most appropriate forum in which to summarize such research results. The one-day session entitled “Toward Improved Durability in Advanced Aircraft Engine Hot Sections” and this volume of the session’s papers is the result.