Professor Adam Clare, University of Nottingham

Research Chairs and Senior Research Fellowships 2019/20

Gas turbine manufacturers are driven to deliver better value to customers due to ‘power-by-the-hour’ service models where revenue is dictated by engine operating times and intervals between services. This means keeping engines flying using noninvasive repair through manufacturing technologies which deliver longevity in both service and revenue are key. Traditional approaches for gas turbine repair and reconditioning rely upon engine dismounting, disassembly, repair/replacement of damaged components and reinstallation, leading to significant time penalties.

Professor Clare’s project tackles this challenge, creating technologies to revolutionise the range of available processes that can be applied within an engine, while still mounted to the wing. This will create unparalleled repair capability, not currently available to gas turbine manufacturers or operators.

Portable and miniaturised variants of techniques currently used for new part manufacture, such as electrochemical machining, electrical discharge machining/coating and additive manufacturing, will be created enabling their application in repair. This will require re-examination of widely accepted limitations for these techniques, while also requiring new inspection methods, drawing from a range of engineering disciplines.

The project will be delivered within the Rolls-Royce UTC at the University of Nottingham, housing a Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 aero engine. This will be used as a ‘real-life’ test bed for proving novel technologies alongside Rolls-Royce engineers.

Personal website: https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/engineering/people/adam.clare

Linkedin: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/dradamclare?trk=public_post_feed-actor-name

Professor Adam Clare