GE Global Research has picked IIT-Madras for basic research in developing technologies that could be later used in aircraft maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) operations.

Supported financially by government of India’s ‘Uchchatar Avishkar Yojana’ or (UAY), GE has set up a ‘surface modification and additive research technologies’ (SMART) lab at IIT-Madras at a cost of ₹5.5 crore.

Seventy-five per cent of the cost has come from the UAY scheme, Alok Nanda, CEO, GE India Technology Centre, and M Kamaraj, Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, IIT-M, told BusinessLine.

The lab will develop technologies to metal-coat surfaces for restoring worn-out products.

Several technologies such as physical and chemical vapour deposition and plasma coating have been used by the industry for long. These first melt the consumable material and deposit it on the surface.

But in the process, the chemistry of the surface could change a little or cause distortions. The ‘cold spray’ technology that GE-IIT-M are attempting to develop uses high velocity to achieve the coating.

Nitrogen, at extremely high pressure (50-80 bar), is used to push the consumable material onto the surface at supersonic speeds of 900-1,200 metres a second.

Getting the tech ready

The maturity of a technology is expressed in terms of ‘technology readiness level’, on a scale of 1 to 10.

The cold spray technology of GE-IIT-M is at TRL-1.

“When we reach TRL-4, we (GE) will be ready to run with it,” Nanda said. “It is better to do the early TRL investigations in an academic institution, because it requires a lot of fundamental research,” he said.

The availability of equipment for testing and validating coated surfaces made GE choose IIT-M. Also, funding from UAY helped.

Nanda and Kamaraj explained that ‘high speed cold spray’ for coating metal surfaces is nascent in India, and the lab inaugurated at IIT-M is the first of its kind in the country.

The availability of this technology in India would accelerate the growth of the MRO industry in India, which is worth ₹4,800 crore currently, and is growing at 7 per cent every year, Nanda said.