Overview of the German Ceramic Gas Turbine Program

Abstract

In 1974 the German government initiated a vehicular gas turbine program emphasizing high strength — high temperature structural ceramics. From the beginning it was a cost-shared program bringing together government, industrial and university facilities and teaming gas turbine engineers with ceramicists and material scientists. The team was not organized as one main contractor with numerous sub-contractors. Instead, there were more than ten partners of equal status and several laboratories concerned with the more basic scientific problems. Very real communications barriers can exist during introduction of new materials and design techniques. In referring to such difficulties in structural ceramics, we coined the term the materials-design-canyon. This partnership of equals was an attempt to bridge the materials-design-canyon.