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US 9,427,835 B2Granted
Nano-metal coated vane component for gas turbine engines and method of manufacturing same
AssigneePratt & Whitney Canada Corp.
InventorsKin-Leung Cheung, Enzo Macchia, Barry Bamett
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Abstract
A method of manufacturing a vane component of a gas turbine engine is described, and includes forming a core of the vane component using a rapid manufacturing process, and applying a coating of nanocrystalline metal onto the core, the nanocrystalline metal fully encapsulating the core and defining an outer structural surface of the vane component.
Claims15
A method of manufacturing a vane component of a gas turbine engine, the method comprising:
- forming, using a rapid manufacturing process, an internal space frame structure out of a substrate material and forming, using the rapid manufacturing process, a core of the vane component with a cavity therein by applying the substrate material to the space frame structure such that the core is at least partially hollow;
- and
- applying a coating of nanocrystalline metal onto the core, the nanocrystalline metal fully encapsulating the core and defining an outer structural surface of the vane component.
A method of manufacturing a vane component of a gas turbine engine, the method comprising the steps of:
- i) using a computer-controlled rapid manufacturing machine to produce a pre-form core of said vane component out of a core substrate material, the core defining a cavity therein such that the core is at least partially hollow, the core substrate material comprising composite, polymer or metal, the computer-controlled rapid manufacturing machine being controlled by a computer readable information source representative of the core of the vane component;
- ii) applying the core substrate material to fabricate a space frame structure within the cavity using the computer-controlled rapid manufacturing machine to form the pre-form core;
- and
- iii) plating said pre-form core produced by the computer-controlled rapid manufacturing machine with a nano-grain size metallic coating to encapsulate the pre-form core with said nano-grain size metallic coating and define an outer structural surface of the vane component.
1 more element
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.