Advanced High-Entropy Alloys Development for TURBOmachine applications – TURBO-AHEAD

The proposed project offers opportunities to explore, discover and develop new classes of compositionally complex alloys called High-Entropy Alloys (HEAs) – whose name emphasizes their inherent high mixing entropy. HEAs are a promising way toward the development of new and innovative metallurgy. Based on a real breakthrough from traditional materials concepts, the alloy design considers the formation of simple solid solution(s) with the mixing of multi-principal elements. The resulting materials have advanced properties, as they are likely to form distorted (solid solutions) phases with thermally stable microstructures with tremendous solid solution strengthening.

The project is a premiere in France, aimed at investigating HEAs capability for turbomachine applications for aerospace industry and especially low-pressure turbines (LPTs) in the 800-1000°C temperature range. The design of new high potential HEAs systems with significantly improved properties requires a multi-scale approach and a suitable combination of experiments. The ambitious nature of the proposal lies in this approach and also focuses on scientific axes, considered since decades as expertise domains of the involved partners: from the chemical metallurgy (formulation and preparation) to the properties through microstructure investigations and the understanding of the microstructure/mechanical properties relationships.