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Recent achievements of our research
Ceramic Matrix Composites Center (CMC Center)
Director Yutaka KAGAWA (Ceramic Matrix Composites Center)
Since its establishment in April 2017, CMC Center, part of TUT’s KARL, has been promoting research aimed at the practical application of CMC to a variety of critical industrial components, such as aircraft engines. Some of its research is conducted under the auspices of METI, MEXT, and the Cabinet Office. Some other collaboration is with Japanese corporations.
1. Sustainable Society Enabled by CMC
The aircraft engine featuring a CMC contributes to the realization of a sustainable society by reducing energy as well as CO2.
Why CMC now?
CMC is a unique material that capitalizes on ceramic’s strengths such as robustness, light weight, and high-temperature stability, while making up for its shortcomings such as brittleness. It is a fabric woven with strong fibers made of a ceramic material whose tiny voids between fibers are filled with another ceramic material. This innovative structure confines ceramic’s destruction into tiny localities while maintaining the strength of the ceramic fabric, in other words, it prevents abrupt large-scale destruction from occurring by keeping miniscule destruction low and isolated.
2. Creating CMC
You can create a CMC object by first forming a 2- or 3- dimensional shape by weaving SiC fabric into the material and then filling tiny gaps inside the fabric with the same ceramic material as the fabric.
SiC Fiber: Fiber that makes up high-temperature resistant CMC
The strength of CMC comes from the special feature of the SiC fiber that makes it up. SiC fiber was invented by the late Professor Seiji Yajima at Tohoku University in the mid-1970s. To date, only Japanese manufacturers have succeeded in mass-producing it on a commercial basis. It epitomizes the commercialization of basic research in materials science at a university.
3. Using CMC
To ensure a safe use of a CMC product, one needs to test its operation under the conditions as close as actual use. While such a test usually calls for an extensive length of time, we employ AI to test its mechanical and high-temperature performance in order to shorten the development time.
Evaluation of CMC’s stability under mechanical load at high temperatures
In many applications, CMC is exposed to high temperatures around 1,400 ℃ (2,552 ℉) for an extended length of time. To ensure safe operation of an aircraft engine, it is essential to test it for robustness over a long time under mechanical load. This is called a high-temperature dynamic test. TUT is equipped with a number of devices and facilities that can be used to conduct such tests under real life use environments and makes them available for public use. At TUT, we are also developing various test methods for quality assurance and maintenance. In addition, to help reduce materials development time, we are busy establishing accelerated test methods for quickly identifying changes that occur over a long time.
4. Examples of research on the application of CMC to practical use
Feel free to contact us if you have any questions.