Paul Withey is the Professor of Casting at the School of Metallurgy and Materials of the University of Birmingham, UK. Before joining the University of Birmingham in 2018, Paul worked at Rolls Royce for 21 years developing new superalloys and manufacturing processes for gas turbine components. As an Engineering Associate Fellow, Paul was a member of a select group of the top 100 specialist engineers across all engineering disciplines within Rolls Royce, and in 2015, Paul and his team were awarded the highest technical award within Rolls-Royce; the Sir Henry Royce Award.

Paul’s particular expertise lies in investment casting of aerospace metals, especially of high-temperature superalloys used in the hot turbine stages of modern jet engines. Throughout his career at Rolls-Royce, Paul has developed and optimised manufacturing processes for single-crystal turbine blades with a total of 14 patents to his name. Despite phenomenal advances in materials technology, a number of questions with regard to how the turbine blade shape, materials and process parameters interact remain unanswered, and these questions form the basis of Paul’s ongoing research. In this episode, Paul and I discuss:

the unique differences between research in academia and industry
what single-crystal superalloys are and how they are manufactured
why single-crystal superalloys are a critical technology for modern jet engines
and the research questions that Paul is currently trying to answer

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Selected Links from the Episode

Paul Withey's research profile
A brief history of single-crystal superalloys
Turbines stresses and turbine blade materials
Modelling video of grain selection manufacturing
Video about Rolls Royce turbine blades