#21 – Prof. Paul Withey on single-crystal superalloys for jet engine turbines

Paul Withey is the Professor of Casting at the School of Metallurgy and Materials of the University of Birmingham in the UK. Before joining the University of Birmingham in 2018, Paul worked at Rolls Royce for 21 years developing new materials and manufacturing processes for gas turbine components. As an Engineering Associate Fellow, Paul was a member of a select group of the top 100 specialist engineers across all engineering disciplines within Rolls Royce, and in 2015, Paul and his team were awarded the highest technical award within Rolls-Royce; the Sir Henry Royce Award. Paul’s particular expertise lies in investment casting of aerospace metals, especially of high-temperature superalloys used in the hot turbine stages of modern jet engines. Throughout his career at Rolls-Royce, Paul has developed and optimised manufacturing processes for single-crystal turbine blades with a total of 14 patents to his name. Despite phenomenal advances in materials technology, a number of questions with regard to how the turbine blade shape, materials and process parameters interact remain unanswered, and these questions form the basis of Paul’s ongoing research. In this episode, Paul and I discuss:

• the unique differences between research in academia and industry
• what single-crystal superalloys are and how they are manufactured
• why single-crystal superalloys are a critical technology for modern jet engines
• and the research questions that Paul is currently trying to answer

If you want to learn more about the topics discussed in this episode, then you can find show notes with links to more in-depth material on the aerospace engineering blog. If you want to support the show then please leave a review; share it on social media with your friends and family; or support us directly on Patreon. Thanks a lot for listening!

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