Why Jet Engines Don’t Melt
Jet engines survive insanely high temperatures by combining clever design, superalloy magic and active cooling. The video kicks off with an engine tour—compressor, combustion chamber, turbine—and explains why these beasts have to be so huge. Inside, nickel-based superalloys (with a gamma-prime phase) and single-crystal blades resist creep by managing dislocations and grain boundaries at the microscopic level.
A behind-the-scenes look at Rolls-Royce’s precision casting shows how blades are grown in vacuum molds, machined with internal cooling channels and slathered in thermal barrier coatings. The end result? A turbine blade that stays solid even when the gas stream is hotter than its melting point—until you throw sand at it, that is.
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