Ceramic blade attachments

Studies under way on two concepts for producing a turbine rotor with ceramic blades and superalloy disks are discussed. One concept employs hot-pressed silicon nitride blades and a compliant interlayer at the blade root end fitting whereas the second concept relies on a superplastic plastic forging technique to attach ceramic blades to the metal disk. This latter concept has been hot spin tested at 2250 F and 45,000 RPM for 50 hours in a vacuum spin pit. The fully bladed (30 blades) rotor survived this major test.