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Gas turbine engines subject materials to extreme conditions. Their high temperature materials and co-developed coatings must survive combustion gas temperatures currently approaching 1800 °C, large thermal gradients, severe thermal shock, and static and fatigue inducing applied stresses, all the while operating in highly reactive, high-pressure, high-speed combustion gas flows containing significant partial pressures of water vapor, oxygen, and other reactive species for many tens of thousands of hours. We describe the design and development of a test facility for the study of materials under individual and combinations of test parameters similar to those experienced within legacy and future engines. A hydraulic load frame capable of applying static or cyclic tension-compression stresses up to 400 MPa to flat-dog bone-shaped test specimens is integrated within an environmental test chamber capable of sustaining gas pressures from 0.1 to 1.2 MPa (1-12 atm). An adjustable 0.1-2 kW power CO2 laser whose 10.6 µm wavelength radiation is strongly absorbed by ceramic coating materials is used to heat sample surfaces to temperatures of 1800 °C and above, while rear surface air jet cooling establishes through-thickness thermal gradients. Rapid laser heating in conjunction with transiently applied front and/or rear-side air cooling is used to create hot or cold thermal shock effects. This is accompanied by the impingement of a high pressure (up to 1.3 MPa) reactive gas jet upon the sample with speeds up to 300 m/s by preheating dry air, mixing it with steam to the desired humidity, heating to 850 °C, and then expanding it through a converging nozzle. Thermal imaging pyrometers measure specimen front and back surface temperature fields, while environmental test chamber view ports permit digital image correlation and strain mapping., (© 2024 Author(s). Published under an exclusive license by AIP Publishing.)

Crystallization of dry particle assemblies via imposed vibrations is a scalable route to assemble micro/macro crystals. It is well understood that there exists an optimal frequency to maximize crystallization with broad acceptance that this optimal frequency emerges because high-frequency vibration results in overexcitation of the assembly. Using measurements that include interrupted X-ray computed tomography and high-speed photography combined with discrete-element simulations we show that, rather counterintuitively, high-frequency vibration underexcites the assembly. The large accelerations imposed by high-frequency vibrations create a fluidized boundary layer that prevents momentum transfer into the bulk of the granular assembly. This results in particle underexcitation which inhibits the rearrangements required for crystallization. This clear understanding of the mechanisms has allowed the development of a simple concept to inhibit fluidization which thereby allows crystallization under high-frequency vibrations.

In the mid-1970's a program of fundamental research was initiated at NBS to improve the scientific understanding of acoustic emission. Many individual results of this research have been reported in the literature and are beginning to be incorporated in a new generation of acoustic emission instrumentation, in improved test methodologies, and in the analysis of data. Here, we summarize the problems faced by acoustic emission midway through the last decade, review the accomplishments of the NBS program and related researchs programs, and outline the research that will be required in future years.

A theoretical framework is developed within which it is possible to predict the dynamic elastic displacement field (acoustic emission) for a phase transformation in which there is a change of both crystal structure (elastic constants) and shape (density). An integral equation is presented for the acoustic emission displacement field due to formation of inhomogeneous inclusions. This integral equation is solved by expressing the source in multipolar form and using the Eshelby equivalent inclusion method to estimate the dynamic multipolar coefficients. Expressions for the source of elastic radiation are explicitly calculated for small isotropic spherical and ellipsoidal inclusions embedded in an isotropic matrix. These expressions are used for qualitative interpretation of recent experiments on martensitic transformations in steels and for identifying the information that may be deduced about transformation dynamics from quantitative measurements of acoustic emission.

Two ultrasonic techniques for reconstructing the internal temperature distribution in metal bodies-time-of-flight tomography and dimensional resonance profiling-are described. An analysis of the tomographic reconstruction of temperature (including ray refraction effects) in a cylindrical body is presented together with initial experimental results. Dimensional resonance profiling is a new technique that allows the reconstruction of a one-dimensional distribution of temperature in a structure from measurements of its resonant frequencies. While time-of-flight tomography is well suited for measuring temperature in a cylindrical geometry, a combination of dimensional resonance and (a restricted form of) tomography is the best method for measuring temperature profiles in the more practically important rectangular slab geometry.