Highly Simulative Subscale Testing

Recent advances in the state-of-the-art in the elevated temperature testing technologies for gas turbine engine components has lead to significant reduction in the cost of traditionally unaffordable tests: This presents the opportunity for affordable but more realistic testing of material specimens in “engine-like” conditions.  Such tests would provide new insight into behavior of gas turbine engine materials, coatings and components that immediately applies to improvement of design and safety of operation critical engine components via better understanding of their failure mechanisms.  Data from the tests also will be essential references that support the effort of Integrated Computational Materials Engineering (ICME) and advances of rotor design and usage-based lifing analysis models.

Test Devices has developed an affordable, novel rig design that will allow efficient and realistic component tests in an engine-like environment: with actual component geometries, highly representative mechanical and thermal loading and the damaging effect from the hot gas ingredients.

This Highly Simulative Subscale Testing (HSST) rig will utilize a scaled model of a test rotor that retains the actual or geometric representation of the test blade or rim feature. Where applicable, actual or simulated bulk/surface defects can be added to the test piece; the same approach can be used to test a wide variety of environmental coatings for evaluation.