Advanced heat treatment and hard coating technologies that reduce flying weights, cut specific fuel consumption and carbon footprint, and achieve substantial erosive wear reductions will be promoted by the Wallwork Group (hall 4, stand G1).
In addition to its project work with the University of Sheffield, NMB-Minebea and Lufthansa Technik on collaborative projects, Wallwork Group and its subsidiary Tecvac have recently invested over £1 million in enhanced facilities to serve the aerospace sector. This includes contract degreasing services, a NADCAP approved heat treatment plant, and development of advanced hard coatings for aerospace.
Tecvac's Cambridge facility has recently been enhanced by an erosion test rig to evaluate performance of hard coated engine and landing gear components, with support from a specialist erosion test engineer. Nitron Flight coatings produced by the company already have substantial operational histories with advanced engines in civil and defence projects and offer a choice of erosion resistance, high temperature performance and extremely low friction coefficients.
Some of its coatings for turbine blades have been shown to reduce erosive wear by 75% compared with surface coatings currently in service, and a joint project with Lufthansa Technik has demonstrated potential fuel burn (specific fuel consumption) reductions of 0.3% or more. Based on its calculations, this could lead to an A340 aircraft saving well over 100,000 litres of fuel per year in normal civil duties, reducing its annual carbon footprint by around 250 tonnes.
As well as the established Nitron Flight brand, other Tecvac coatings include Diamolith (DLC), Nitron A (TiN-based), Nitron B (CrN-based) as well as Nitron CA (CrAlN-based), which has been shown to operate effectively at temperatures of up to 1000°C. Tecvac will also show its latest vacuum brazing technology, which can handle complex assemblies up to 1.5m3, with more than 15,000 individual parts.
www.wallworkht.com
