Building something new usually takes a lot of brains, effort and time. When GE decided to put blades made from untested carbon fiber composites inside a brand new jet engine, replacing titanium with what was essentially plastic, it also required a lot of nerves.
“The design team woke up every morning thinking about it, and went to bed every night thinking about it,” says David Joyce, chief executive of GE Aviation. “It was such a radical change in design.”
The result was the GE90, the world’s largest and most powerful jet engine, and the bet, which took place 20 years ago, keeps paying off. “It was an investment that wasn’t just for the GE90,“ Joyce said at the Paris Air Show this week.
GE’s next engine, the GEnx, used composites for fan blades but also for the fan casing, a new application of the material that helped the engine shed hundreds of pounds.
The latest engines like the LEAP and the GE9X and also standing on the shoulders of the GE90 giant, and adding the newest materials and technologies such as heat-resistant ceramic matrix composites and 3D printing. “We have a really nice suite of technologies to sample,” Joyce said.
But GE Aviation is not the only business with access to this high-tech buffet. For example, aircraft engine technologies have found applications in gas turbines for power generation and wind turbine design. “We all share and leverage what scientists at our Global Research Centers develop,” Joyce said. “That’s the idea of the ‘GE store.’”
