Jet engines are basically giant, high-speed air pumps: air gets squished in the front, fuel gets sprayed and ignited, and the exhaust spins turbine blades at crazy temperatures (well over 1,000 °C). They’re huge partly because cramming more air and fuel into the cycle makes every bite of fuel go farther, generating insane thrust for jets.
So why don’t the turbine blades melt? It all comes down to fancy materials and precision casting. Modern blades are made from nickel-based superalloys packed with “gamma prime” strengthening particles, cast as single crystals to ditch weak grain boundaries, then drilled full of micro‐cooling channels and coated with ceramic barriers. The result: blades that stay just cool enough to survive—even when you fling sand at them.
Watch on YouTube
Top comments (0)