Investment casting and high temperature alloys
Description / Outline
The chair uses two investment casting plants of different sizes (casting weights max. 10 kg or max 0,6 kg), in which innovative cooling technologies can be realized.Based on experience with the LMC (Liquid Metal Cooling) process, our research is focused on the investigation of the newly developed FCBC (Fluidized Carbon Bed Cooling) process for the single crystalline solidification of superalloys. In comparison with commercially available investment casting processes it could be shown that FCBC benefits from a higher cooling potential. In combination with a dynamic baffle a higher axial temperature gradient will evolve. Objective is the improvement of the process understanding as well as the process optimization, carried out on a 10 kg prototype plant. A further point of interest is the exploitation of the increased microstructural homogeneity for alloy development. The material development is carried out in close cooperation with the group High Performance Alloys of the chair.
These activitis are embedded in the collaborative research centre DFG TR 103 “From Atom to Turbine Blade” (http://www.sfb-transregio103.de/).