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Back to all Prize Winners

2007 - Phil Carroll

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                           
                                                                    Jeff Allen of Rolls Royce accepted the Award
                                                                    from AILU President Tim Holt for Phil Carroll

The Young UK Laser Engineer's Prize for 2007
went to
Phil Carroll

 Phil Carroll wins AILU's 2007 Young UK Laser Engineer's Prize Dr Phil Carroll is AILU's 2007 Young Laser Engineer in recognition of his successful development of a Direct Metal Laser Deposition (DMLD) technique for the repair of an abradable seal between rotating turbine blade seal fins and the engine casing.

DMLD is already an established technique for the repair of turbine components in the aeroengine and power generation industries, and applications to date have usually been limited to alloys that are easily welded, in simple geometries, with significant post-deposition machining. Phil has developed a DMLD repair procedure for Single Crystal (SX) seal segments, involving the build up of a diamond shaped lattice of wall thickness 0.3mm, using Relay 1, a Rolls Royce propriety Nickel super-alloy developed for its high temperature oxidisation resistance, onto a CMSX-4 substrate. A test sample is shown below.

Rolls Royce has a particular interest in this work, since the seal segment lattice has to be replaced several times over the life of the engine. The DMLD technique that Phil has developed allows for the replacement of the lattice without the replacement of the complete CMSX-4 casting.

According to Dr Jeffrey Allen, who is responsible for the development of this technology within Rolls Royce, the seal segment repair will "deliver significant cost savings to Rolls Royce whilst at the same time reducing the environmental impact through reduced material usage".

Phil, who has a degree in Mechanical Engineering from University College Dublin and a Ph.D. on the rapid solidification of metallic glasses from the University of Sheffield, started work at TWI Yorkshire in 2004. The work was carried out with Phil as technical project leader, using a modified Trumpf DLD505 laser deposition machine.

A diamond shaped lattice in a Rolls Royce propriety
Nickel superalloy built be Direct Metal Laser Deposition