Heat Treatment Technologies

There can be numerous reasons to do heat treatment on metallic components. The fusion welding tends to cause undesirable mechanical property changes by having the microstructure changed driven by the localized heat exposure. A broadly utilized method for stress relieve and mechanical property restoration is heat treatment. There are also other unique application possibilities beyond that like the precipitation hardening as the result of a controlled solution & age heat treatment cycle. Aero Space Power’s vacuum furnace is capable of these heat treatment operations and has the capability for vacuum brazing too.

The ultimate vacuum level we can achieve is <0.5 Torr, and the available instrumentation enables us to monitor the temperature dispersion inside of the vacuum chambers by 3pc of control & 12pc of load thermocouples. Our furnaces meet the pyrometric requirements of AMS2750.

There are certain components available in both jet engines and gas turbines that has unique operating conditions and are exposed to special operating conditions. That can cause high stresses, thermal fatigue, and high-temperature oxidation, and that often ends in crack nucleation and crack propagation. The cracks are usually impacted by oxidation too.

Welding is an option to repair cracks, however only in moderation. Significant portion of hot gas path components can be repaired only by activated diffusion healing (ADH). This procedure may be accomplished successfully only if the cracks are free of oxides. Our heat treatment equipment has the capability to introduce H2 gas in partial pressure in a well-controlled manner to reduce the embedded oxides inside of the cracks. And once the cracks are clean the ADH is also something that is a perfect fit to our technologies as it is pretty much alike of brazing. This repair method provides cost effective solution to get high-value HPT parts back to serviceable condition and that can also extend the lifetime of turbine components to make long term service agreements more profitable.