The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) recently named the Pratt & Whitney single crystal turbine blade an historic mechanical engineering landmark.
These blades, which can be found in many modern, high-performance gas turbines (a.k.a. jet engines)—including the ones powering the F-22 Raptor, and larger electricity-producing turbines—are grown from a single crystal in a vacuum casting furnace from superalloys. They increase the turbine’s efficiency and individual blade’s service life, while giving it unmatched resistance to high-temperature creep and fatigue.